The Proposal
by paundromat
Summary: When Kurt Hummel's top-tier business position is threatened by his impending deportation to Paris, he immediately elects to marry his assistant-cum-secretary, Blaine Anderson. AU, based upon The Proposal. Rating subject to change.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Glee or The Proposal.

_"Would you please, with cherries on top, marry me?" —Margaret Tate, The Proposal_

**I**

Blaine Anderson's aboard a particularly vengeful train of thought as he narrowly avoids the three honking taxis stalling by the crosswalk and holds several paper bags from Starbucks over his head to keep dry. The rain is a reminder, the constant rapping against the sidewalk is a stopwatch, and the ticking is frustratingly intermittent.

The weather man, Rod Remington, had promised sunshine all over New York City with smile and machismo to boot, and Blaine can't help but revel in the unbridled irony of it all. Sunshine? _Ha!_ There's absolutely none of it; in fact, the weather is positively dismal. There are drops of infuriatingly steadfast rain pelting at Blaine's hair, mussing the gel up and causing it to stick up in strange places.

The closest thing to sunshine available, actually, is the multi-meter long billboard of pop sensation Sunshine Corazon that's hanging over the side of one of the many buildings of New York City. It's damp and already beginning to show some evidence of deterioration, but Sunshine is still there with thickly-rimmed eyeglasses and a smile like a little girl's. She's wearing an oversized knit sweater with "N.D." embroidered on the side in ruby thread.

"Blaine Anderson," he tells himself through gritted teeth, "You are in too far over your head."

As if to prove a point, a water droplet collides with his scalp and causes a lock of hair to collapse onto his forehead.

When he manages to scoot underneath an awning in order to pull out his umbrella, God, or Buddha, or Allah, or Zeus, or whoever decides to end the downpour. He feels the pit-pattering on the stretched plastic of the awning cease and closes his umbrella triumphantly.

There's a buzz in his pocket, and it turns out to be his Blackberry alerting him of a text message and bringing him back down to earth. He slides it out of his pocket and presses his thumb to one of the many buttons that are peppered on the face of the phone.

_It's coming!_ a text message from Mike, one of his business associates, urges. _Sent from my iPhone_ is what it says after it.

Another vibration, and then a message from Tina: _5...4...3...2..._

Blaine twitches once and jumps over a two-foot wide puddle while cradling the coffee to his chest, extending a foot to keep the door of his workplace open. A strained two-finger salute to the friendly blond doorman, Jeff, later, Blaine dives into the open doors of the glass paneled elevator, jabs the button for the fifteenth floor with his free thumb, and collapses against the wall.

He's shaky and absolutely boneless.

.:.

"Grande nonfat mocha with the sugar on the side and a blueberry scone warmed on top of the toaster, not in it, for fifty seconds, sir," Blaine says in a feeble attempt at amiability, gesturing to the pile of Starbucks merchandise arranged on the shiny mahogany desk.

Kurt Hummel, fashion extraordinaire, merely stares at Blaine's sweaty forehead with an unimpressed look on his face, places his Yves Saint Laurent tote on the plush carpet, and directs his gaze towards the steaming coffee. "I asked for Truvia, not sugar," he says disdainfully, walking around Blaine and into the seat of his desk.

That's fine. Blaine's come prepared for that. "I brought that too, sir," he says, surreptitiously slipping two packets of sugar substitute out of his wallet (he's kept a variety of coffee sweeteners in there ever since Kurt began to desire a different kind each workday), thumbing through twenty-dollar bills and a lone latex condom wrapped in aluminum foil.

Kurt takes the packet of sugar sweetener and shoots him a steely smile. "I'm glad that I've got an personal assistant who's at least somewhat adequate," he says, and Blaine can't help but feel a small surge of pride.

Kurt is the executive officer of New Directions, an up-and-coming fashion company that already boasts three individual fashion lines and an entire host of capable designers on queue to get their creations under the New Directions umbrella. Created originally by one William Schuester, the company's been working on branching overseas all thanks to its supervisor, Kurt Hummel, widely regarded as a loose cannon in the fashion industry, a complete purist as well as an innovator—Kurt has for so long adored the classics, the rounded shape of Sophia Loren, but he also harbors an admiration for the hard, angular lines formed by the arms of the models who strut down runways for McQueen.

Most of all, he likes success.

Kurt's categorizes himself as gay, but Blaine's never been one for labels; besides, the public knows that Kurt would never sacrifice his business prowess for a romantic relationship with another man. Kurt's overall negative perception of the world, Blaine reasons, overtakes his generally attractive features and killer fashion sense that would have otherwise sent the entire gay male population into swoon fits and secret erections.

There's a click of the computer mouse, and then Kurt looks up and asks, "What's on the agenda today?"

That being said, there are definite perks to Blaine's job as Kurt's private assistant. It pays decently for what it entails and doesn't involve too much thinking in terms of business or numbers. Blaine's simply there to show up at work every morning with a hot mocha in his hands, and the rest of of his job is performed via the Internet or over the phone, with people from Paris and London calling in to discuss their designs and how they might fit into New Directions.

Blaine takes a deep breath before rattling off the list of potential designers and the concepts he memorized the night before.

A frown cuts across Kurt's face, and it's almost jarring to see. He swirls the packet of Truvia into his drink. "Mmm. Dismiss them all," he says, and then he takes a sip of coffee and grimaces at the taste. "This is awful, Blaine. Who was the barista you got this from?"

"Why would I know who I got the coffee from?" Blaine asks after taking in a sharp breath. "More importantly, Mr. Hummel, you can't just dismiss everyone without considering them for the upcoming Fall collection, that's _wrong_. Morally incorrect."

"As wrong as accepting the absolute shit we've been getting so far, Anderson?" Kurt asks archly, giving Blaine an innocent look, left eyebrow drifting up higher than the right one. "And since when have you been so...emotionally attached to any of these hopefuls?"

Blaine averts his gaze. "Truthfully, sir, I looked over one of the portfolios of the applicants. Frankly, I think it's amazing."

Kurt gives a laugh as dry as fresh laundry. Blaine doesn't reciprocate.

Sobering and dropping a delicate hand to his chest, Kurt adds, "Oh, I'm sorry, that wasn't meant to be a joke, was it? My apologies, I thought it was hilarious."

Blaine catches a glimpse of Finn Hudson through the window of Kurt's office, drawing a finger across his neck and mouthing, "It's not worth it!" with a palpable sense of desperation oozing into his tall frame and slouched posture.

"Sorry," Blaine mouths back weakly, and brings his attention back to Kurt.

"I know how partial you can get, Blaine," Kurt continues. "And I just wanted to let you know that part of being involved in the fashion industry is the heartlessness of it all. I know that I may seem like the dictator in this charmingly authoritarian set-up we have here..."

"Yes, sir?"

"...but in actuality, I'm not. I have a boss, too, you know. And while Schuester can be soft at times, rest assured that I will always give him the best of the best. And that's just how it goes." Kurt continues to tap away at the keys of his computer. "Anyway. As for personal dues?"

Blaine folds his hands together neatly and cleared his throat. Kurt doesn't look up from his computer screen, and Blaine can feel his annoyance when he eventually deigns to glance up and ask, "Well?"

"Sandy Ryerson from U.S. immigration called me last night. He said that he wanted to see you." Blaine says quietly. Kurt doesn't acknowledge that, and Blaine finds himself having to repeat the statement again. "Sir? Sandy Ryerson from U.S. immigration wants to see you."

"Ryerson...?" Kurt finally repeats, picking at a blueberry from the scone on his desk. "Do I know him?"

Blaine scratches at the nape of his neck. "The, uh, 'ugly baldy', as you put it when you met with him a year and a half ago."

Recognition clicks in Kurt's eyes.

"Sandy!" Kurt exclaims, lacing his fingers together and leaning his chin against them. "I know just who you're talking about."

Reaching into his briefcase, Blaine pulls out a leather-bound planner and poises a pen at a page. "Is Friday at ten o'clock too much to ask? I can always reschedule with—"

Kurt cuts Blaine off sharply with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It's fine," he says nonchalantly..

Blaine ducks his head down in a small bow. "He'll be expecting you then, sir—"

"Us. He'll be expecting us," Kurt interrupts, returning his attention to the promo catalogs on his computer screen. He clicks on a high-res picture of a pair of hunter green pumps and examines it, biting at his lower lip in concentration. The detailing is nice, but the patent finish is awful.

"What?" Blaine blinks several times in rapid succession.

"Well, you're coming with me," Kurt says with that same hard, unfazed smile on his lips.

"Hm? Oh. I, uh, can't. I'm visiting my family in Westerville this weekend...I'm going to be busy packing on Friday, and I have plane tickets scheduled for Friday evening...besides, Friday's usually my day off, sir, you know my schedule..."

"Oh, really, now?" Kurt sips at his coffee placidly. "_Mm-hm_, don't really care."

Silence falls upon the two men: one of them, Blaine, sways back and forth in his spot with an obvious grimace decorating his face, and the second, Kurt, continues to tap away at the keys of his computer busily, monitoring the one of the three designer labels under his jurisdiction—Mercedes Jones produced a score of vibrant scarves and accessories that simply _click _with the season's color blocking trend.

Blaine continues to sway in his spot until Kurt shrills, "My God!" and stands up abruptly from his seat. "Finn Hudson. Away from Miss Fabray's cubicle this instant!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Blaine sees a sheepish looking Finn retreat back into the confines of his personal box. Kurt nods to himself as he lets a long sigh whoosh out of his chest.

"What was the name of that girl we had working with packaging and advertising?" Kurt asks once his voice is uncharacteristically calm and mellow again.

"...Rachel Berry?" Blaine looks down nervously. Rachel's got a bit of a strong-willed streak in her, but Blaine's found that he has a sort of camaraderie with her. They're both exceedingly hard workers, and Blaine would hate to see her go. Unfortunately, the look on Kurt's face is dangerous, and his usually soft pink lips are pulled tight in a disapproving grimace.

Kurt's head shoots up as he snaps his fingers. "That's it! Rachel Berry's the one." He pulls a sheaf of papers from the printer tray. "Look at this."

The papers are filled with preliminary samples of the tags and logos that are planned to be used for New Directions' upcoming fall line. Blaine frowns as he examined them—chestnut brown with a cut-out bird overlay, and _New Directions_ written in a flowing cursive font. It's definitely a valiant attempt, but all Blaine can read from the design is tacky, tacky, tacky. And if that's what Blaine can perceive, he can't even imagine what the designs must look like to Kurt.

"Completely hideous," Kurt spits out, leaning over and running the pages through the shredder at the foot of his desk. Over the sound of the roaring shredder, he says, "I feel bad for the people using the recycled paper cups that will inevitably be made from these sheets of paper. Blaine, fire her."

"_What_—?"

"You heard me," says Kurt, primly wrapping his uneaten scone in a brown paper napkin and tossing it into the trash bin.

Blaine shakes his head rapidly. "N-no, sir, I don't think you understand, sir, Rachel Berry might be working with advertising right now, but that's only because you're in this position, she's second-in-command and our company representative—"

Kurt waves Blaine away. "I don't need a second-in-command, frankly. And Blaine?"

Blaine shudders and turns his head so he can look straight into Kurt's piercing blue eyes.

"I don't know what she's getting at with these goddamn animal prints. Look for a new advertising girl, please."

Kurt pops the lid off of his coffee and carefully pours the cup's contents into the trash can; Blaine winces as he watched. He would ultimately end up scraping congealed mocha-scone off of the bottom of the bin, he's sure of it.

"Oh, also, Blaine?" Kurt adds, face smooth and professional. "I'd like for you to choose a girl with an actual eye for fashion and an at least passable taste."

"So, like...?"

"Someone the complete opposite of you, I should think, would do the job perfectly."

.:.

"You wanted to meet with me, Sandy?" Kurt asks brusquely, setting his bag down at his feet and crossing one leg over the other in an almost robotically rehearsed movement. "My personal assistant sent me the bulletin a few days ago."

Sandy Ryerson speaks in a wheedling tone that Kurt absolutely abhors and is wearing an ugly sweater vest worthy of upholstering a cat-scratch post. "Mr. Hummel, there's been some discrepancies regarding your American citizenship. If I were to show you these documents—" Sandy pulls out a pile of papers bound by a paperclip "—you would find that you've been staying here in the US for quite some time without a green card or any documentary evidence of legal citizenship."

Kurt slicks his hand over his head offhandedly, smoothing the flyaways down. "And I'm supposed to care _because_...?"

Sandy circles an item on the paper in blue ink and points to it with the nib of his pen. "I'm afraid you're subject to deportation, Mr. Hummel."

Kurt nods blankly. "I'm sorry? I don't quite follow."

"That's expulsion from the country," Sandy explains gently. "As in...immediate expulsion, Mr. Hummel."

Kurt, understanding now, lets out a harsh laugh. "You're kidding, right? I head a design firm, not some godforsaken underground railroad for illegal drug transport. I'm not even an alien, for Jesus' sake, I grew up in _Ohio_. If that's not American then I don't know what is."

"France is regarded as another country, Mr. Hummel," Sandy reminds him, glasses twinkling in the light of the fluorescents. "And you voided your American visa when you went across the pond for university in Paris."

"So deportation is the answer?" Kurt demands, crossing his arms over his chest. Ryerson watches, fascinated, as one of the cords of muscle in his forearms undulate menacingly. "I go to pursue my major in fashion marketing and design—getting a good education and whatnot, living the American dream—and I come home to _this_?"

Sandy pushes his bifocals up higher on the bridge of his nose and nods solemnly—almost too solemnly, Kurt thinks to himself.

"And there's nothing I can do?" Kurt questions, tapping his fingertips against the faux wood of Sandy's desk. "I can't believe this—I just fired my second-in-command!"

"Mr. Hummel, I'm sorry. If you had applied for citizenship earlier, or if you were married to an American citizen..."

Married to an American citizen? Kurt's ears metaphorically perk up at the sound of a possible loophole. "Repeat that, Sandy." The gears in his mind are already shifting uncontrollably, so loudly that for a fleeting moment, Kurt wonders if Ryerson can actually hear them working.

A large furrow appears in between Sandy's two bushy eyebrows. "If you were legally wed to an American citizen, Mr. Humme—"

There's a flash of excitement in Kurt's steely blue eyes. "Oh, Mr. Ryerson..." he says, tone immediately shifting from haughty to cajoling, "...this meeting was entirely uncalled for. See..."

Kurt brings his hand behind his chair and crooks a finger towards Blaine, who had been standing in the corner of the room since the beginning of the entire deportation conversation with Ryerson. A very confused Blaine shuffles over to Kurt, who yanks him down to the seat beside him and thrusts an arm around his waist. "Blaine and I are engaged," Kurt says, and grabs Blaine's hand from underneath the table and squeezes as tight as he can, hoping the pressure would get the message across.

Blaine's hazel eyes widen in alarm and he shoots a questioning look in Kurt's direction.

"Wha—?" he manages before Kurt grabs hold of the skin on his lower back and pinches. "Ow!"

Ryerson looks even more confused than Blaine. "You have... been _dating_... your personal assistant?" he asks, eyes shifting back and forth between Kurt and Blaine. "For how long?"

"Yup," Kurt intones, popping his lips on the 'p' sound. "About...oh, I don't know...eight months and three days. Isn't that right, sweet pea?"

Blaine's face is still full of consternation, but he's able to fake a small, pained smile that ends up looking more like a wounded grimace.

"He's the most beautiful man I've ever met?" Blaine says, his statement coming out more like a question, although it's not completely inaccurate, because Kurt's definitely a handsome man, despite his face's tendency to resemble that of a young milk maid.

"Well, no doubt you're an attractive young couple, but..." Sandy stops. "With all due respect, Mr. Hummel, I didn't even know you were homosexual. If I did, I would have gone for it _ages_ ago—"

"I'm sure my fiance wouldn't have liked that," Blaine mumbles reluctantly. Kurt nods in encouragement and assumes what Blaine presumes is his flirtatious face. His aforementioned flirty face makes him look like he's undergoing intestinal convulsions, and Blaine tries to rein in a shudder brought on by secondary embarrassment.

Sandy chuckles. "That won't make a difference, Blake. I mean, Blaise. Or was it Blaze? Anyway, I'm what they call predatory gay."

Blaine presses his lips together and nods slowly, digging the heels of his palms into his knees. "..._alright_ then."

"_Thank you_, Sandy. We'll just be on our way," Kurt says as graciously as he can muster, pushing the pile of documents back in Sandy's direction.

"_Wait_!" Sandy exclaims, stabbing his pen against a pad of Post-Its. "You two aren't...pretending to be engaged just so Mr. Hummel over here doesn't get deported, are you?" His gaze darts from Kurt's innocent face to Blaine's slightly confused one.

Kurt stands up abruptly, taking Blaine with him, twisting his hand a little in his grip. "Of course we aren't, Sandy. I don't joke about true love," he says, smacking Blaine on the ass coquettishly. "Now get up, pumpkin."

"Soul mates, we are, Mr. Ryerson..." Blaine says, standing up quickly, as if he's been burned. "...sir."

Sandy looks more than a little suspicious. "I'll have my colleague, a Ms. Sue Sylvester, be in contact with you, then," he articulates slowly.

Blaine, still rubbing at his behind in irritation, asks, "Why's that?"

"She's going to be interviewing you to make sure this isn't all made up," Sandy explains. "Because I'm honestly not buying this crap and the consequences you'd have to face for fabricating an engagement, in this context, are amazingly steep."

Blaine's taken to staring at the strip of wall right above Sandy's head in order to distract himself from smacking Kurt in the head with the steel hole puncher that sat on Sandy's desk.

Kurt coughs, caught Blaine's eyes, and bobs his head towards Sandy, as if to tell him to look in the proper direction. Blaine reluctantly stares at the spot in between Sandy's eyebrows.

"Blainers and I have nothing to worry about," Kurt says with a confident smirk, lips curling up at the ends, catlike. "We know everything about each other."

.:.

"That was good acting," Blaine comments in the elevator as the doors slide shut smoothly. "He really bought that charade you made up. He really thinks that we're getting married, Kurt."

"That wasn't acting," Kurt replies tartly, scribbling something into his Moleskine notebook with a fountain pen, voice completely detached and matter-of-fact.

"What?" Blaine demands as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Kurt continues to walk forward, writing things down in his notebook without looking up, and Blaine's forced to keep his pace at a mid-jog in order to keep up. Despite his horror, Blaine remembers to hold the door open for Kurt so that he wouldn't get a face-ful of glass wall. It's one of the cardinal rules of his job position as Kurt's private assistant—very rarely is Kurt observant as he walks, since he expected everyone to part like the Red Sea when faced by his presence.

"Pipe down, Blaine. It's not that big of a deal."

Blaine finds himself lurching forward yet again to prop another door open on the toe of his shoe.

And then they're out on the sidewalk. Blaine figures that people would notice if he began to yell at the token gay businessman. He weighs his options in his mind, considering a possible confrontation in contrast with complete acquiescence.

Yep, he's definitely going to yell.

"What the hell, Kurt? We can't get married!" Blaine shouts. He cradles his face into his hands and dropped the volume of his voice. "I mean...my family doesn't even know I'm _in_ a relationship that's..."

Kurt juts his head out from the pages of his notebook momentarily. "Gay? Queer? Homosexual? How do you say it in that weird Southeastern Asian language of yours?"

"For the last time, I'm Filipino and the term for gay people is bading and...oh, god...you're not serious...you can't be serious, I am going to step into the office and I'll be on _Candid Camera_ or some demented remake of it—"

Kurt shrugs and shoves his notebook back into his bag. "Here's how it's going to work, Anderson. We do the interview. We get married here in New York, where gay marriage has just been made legal. We hang tight for a little bit, never consummate the marriage—" Blaine's cheeks flush a brilliant scarlet at the prospect "—and after a few months, we can get a quickie divorce and cite irreconcilable differences as the reason. Kapiche?"

Blaine scoffs and crosses his arms over each other defiantly. "I'm not worried about my interview. I literally know everything about you; _you're_ the one who's going to have the issues."

"Is that a yes?" Kurt's head extends out a little bit from his neck like an ostrich, as if he's gauging Blaine's reactions in realtime.

"That's a _fuck no_," Blaine says firmly in an attempt to put the kibosh on any of Kurt's schemes.

Kurt sighs loudly and turns around so he was standing face-to-face with Blaine. "I was so hoping you wouldn't say that," he says. "Because I'm firing you if you don't do this for me. Actually, you're fired either way—if I get deported, you don't have a boss, since I fired Rachel Berry. And you wouldn't want her as your boss, anyway, the girl's a nutcase."

Blaine makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and sputters out, "S-still a fuck no!"

Kurt eyes Blaine calmly. "I'll consider that design portfolio of your friend," he says, letting the bribe roll off his tongue easily. "Just do it. You don't have anything to lose."

"Ah, that's where you're wrong, Kurt."

"Please, you lead a meaningless existence, and everyone knows that."

"Gee, you really know how to sweep a guy off of his feet, sir," Blaine says wryly, giving Kurt a scoff.

Kurt quirks an eyebrow up at Blaine. "Well what do you want me to say? Nothing, I hope." He pulls his phone out from his pocket. "Oh, Mercedes is calling me, probably going to ask about that shipment of scarves coming in this seaso—"

Blaine's tone is dangerous now. "Drop the phone, Kurt, and ask nicely." He closes a warm hand over Kurt's cell phone and smoothly finds the power button. He turns the phone off, but let his hand linger until Kurt was forced to take it upon himself to lift it from his side.

Now it's Kurt's turn to scoff. "Not likely. Now keep moving, we're blocking everyone else's way, and I don't want my new Prada brogues to get stepped on. They cost a fortune and can't get scuffed, you know."

Blaine shoots Kurt a withering look. "I'm not doing this unless you ask nicely," he hedges stubbornly.

"Fine," Kurt says, pursing his lips and shaking his shoulders out until they were squared perfectly. "Pretty please will you pretend to marry me?"

Blaine stares Kurt down, obviously unimpressed. For effect, he cocks his head to the side and taps at his wrist.

"With a cherry on top?" Kurt continues, his annoyance breaking through with every word.

Blaine continues to stare at Kurt, undaunted.

"Oh, fuck it," Kurt grumbles, turning his head from left to right in order to examine his surroundings. People are shoving past them from all sides, and they don't seem too set on noticing any kind of well-dressed pair of male business professionals idling around the sidewalk.

Kurt huffs out an annoyed sigh and drops his bag to the concrete, then his knee. He props Blaine's left hand on the knee bent upwards so that he's in the stereotypical proposal position and tries to ignore the bemused look on Blaine's stupidly square, stubbly face.

"Blaine Anderson, will you..." Kurt stops and grinds his teeth together. "Will you marry me?"

Blaine seems to contemplate that for a little bit, but Kurt's fears are ultimately squashed when he simply shrugs. "Sure," he says. "I don't appreciate the sarcasm or the obvious annoyance behind your words, but I'll do it."

And he pulls Kurt into a huge bear hug, just to save face, since it turns out that people did notice and now surround them, clapping and wolf whistling. Kurt feels like stabbing the scantily clad twenty-something who had whipped out an iPhone and recorded the entire proposal from beginning to end.

"I loathe you," Blaine murmurs, and Kurt can feel a tingle travel from the spot on his ear down to the base of his spine.

"Damn you to hell," Kurt replies in a tone that's just as quiet, but perhaps not quite as peaceable.

.:.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Sylvester," Kurt says, crossing his legs and leaning against Blaine, who's sitting next to him with a painfully forced expression of affection plastered onto his face.

Sue Sylvester's generally a terrifying woman, with narrow glasses perched atop a nose far too hawklike and lips that seem perpetually pursed. She's known for her eccentricities; both Blaine and Kurt notice that she's wearing a black tracksuit that gives "business casual" an entirely new meaning.

"Afternoon, ladies," Sue says pleasantly. Blaine frowns at _that_, but Kurt manages to give him a big enough kick in the shins to erase his look of discomfort.

Sue gives both of them a tightlipped smile. "Before we begin, I'd just like to say that I'm on to you. I'm on to _both_ of you, actually."

"I'm sorry?" Kurt says, warding off the blood that's quickly rushing to his face.

"Listen up, dough-boy. You've only been in my office for two minutes and Sue Sylvester can already perceive the reeky stench of the lies emanating from those sweat glands of yours," she replies lightly, closing the leather-bound book that had been open on her desk. "As for the hobbit, there's only one thing I can detect, and that's blackmail. Or perhaps it's just the smell of the pigments in his overly bushy eyebrows. Honestly, I wouldn't be able to tell you." Sue leans forward and adjusts her glasses. "Case in point, ladies?" Sue continues, a sharp glint in her eyes. "There's very little to gain out of this little charade of yours. Ah...Mr. Anderson, is it?"

"Yes," Blaine half-whimpers.

"Are you aware of the consequences of brown-nosing?"

Kurt rolls his eyes. "For the last time, Sue, we're _not_ brown-nosing."

Sue smirks at him. "It sure looks like it, though, and that's a concept I'll have to squeeze into your noggin. That'll prove to be quite the challenge, since your hair's so goddamn big."

Kurt's face falls and his hand floats instinctively upwards to pet at his coif.

"Anyway. Curly-que over here's facing a multi-thousand dollar fine and possible imprisonment, should you two screw up in this charade," Sue says. "And when I say multi-thousand, I'm talking up in the one-hundreds. Not some mamby-pamby 9-k dollar fine."

Blaine's jaw drops increduously. "You're joking."

Sue shrugs. "Sorry, Anderson, Sue Sylvester doesn't joke around. Although I think prison orange would definitely be a good look for you," Her eyes narrow as she gives Blaine a pointedly disdainful once-over. "Nah, actually it'd be _awful_ and I'd absolutely abhor it. While you're in prison, however, you could probably auction off that hair of yours for quite a sum of money. I think you could fetch a good one-hundred dollars from that left eyebrow alone." She pauses and mulls that one over. "God, it's so hairy."

"What are his consequences, then?" Blaine asks levelly, pointing to Kurt, who's still combing through his hair defensively.

Sue examines her papers before looking up at Blaine. "He gets deported."

Kurt lets out a sigh of relief, and then quickly stifles it before Sue could notice.

"That's it?" A large divot appears in the space between Blaine's eyebrows.

"Well, what did you expect? He's already breaking the law by _being_ here. You're the idiot who agreed to all of this," says Sue. "Speaking of, when are you ladies planning this marriage, anyway?"

Both men remain silent.

"Have you even told anyone yet? I'm sorry, but your case is looking awfully...sketchy."

"We're—" Kurt begins.

"—announcing it at my parent's house this weekend. We're going there together." Blaine loops his arm around Kurt's shoulders, and Kurt shoots him a frustrated look. "See, my parents have been living in Westerville since I was in high school, and they've been wanting to meet my boyfriend. Well, he's my fiance now," Blaine says confidently.

Sue cocks an eyebrow at him. "Westerville, Ohio?"

"...yes?" Kurt says in a small voice, trying to ignore the warmth of Blaine's arm around his shoulders.

"Excellent timing, seeing as that gay marriage bill was passed less than half a year ago."

"We're not..." Blaine says. "We're not getting married _there_, Ms. Sylvester, just announcing it. I personally thought it would be the wisest way. And my parents are completely..._completely_ supportive of my sexuality."

"As they should be," Kurt adds in piously.

Sue looks unimpressed as she drums her pen against her desk. "Well, I'll be meeting you in a week, anyway. I have to interview you two. It's my job here at this Immigration office," Sue replies amicably. "In the meantime, take this."

She slams a two-inch thick folder on the desk in front of them.

"What the hell is this?" Kurt demands.

"Your quiz questions for next week," Sue replies shortly. "They're questions that partners should know about each other. Not that you'd have an issue with that, otherwise...well. It's deportation for _you_, Lord Coif-Coif, and imprisonment for Assistant Peewee next to you."

Sue stands up from her desk and claps a hand against Kurt's shoulder. "I wish you the best of luck, Porcelain. You're going to need it."

.:.

**I'm planning on this being relatively short—perhaps around five chapters? Let me know if you think I should continue!**

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**paundromat . tumblr . com**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Glee or the Proposal.

_"Do you prefer Margaret or 'Satan's Mistress'?" — Grandma Annie, The Proposal_

**II**

Blaine returns to his flat just outside Manhattan with a defeated grimace adorning his typically chipper face. He's got his Blackberry out and the little cursor is poised on his mother's phone number, but he can't bring himself to push down and call.

Instead of telling his mother about his secret boyfriend, Blaine chooses to sit at his dining room table with his legs tightly wound together and a bottle of beer placed in front of him.

He doesn't drink it, and the beer stares forlornly at him for so long that he can see the Budweiser logo when he closes his eyes.

"Come on, Blaine," he whispers to his beer. "Tell your mother."

Blaine's problems are solved, however, when the pitch-black screen of his cell phone is roused out of slumber and into a blinding brightness. _Evangeline Anderson_ is displayed as the phone buzzes and belts out the chorus to Manilow's _Copacabana_. You can't really blame Blaine for feeling like an idiot, lounging about in the dark of his one-bedroom apartment as Barry's smarmy voice fills the room.

_Her name was Lola. She was a showgirl. With yellow feathers in her hair, and her dress cut down to there._

_ She would merengue, and do the cha-ch—_

"Blaine," comes his mothers voice as he shakily accepts the call and presses the phone against his ear. "Are you still coming to Ohio this weekend? You've been avoiding me—"

Blaine holds up a tired hand, but quickly realizes that she can't really see him. "Look, Ma—"

"—and I just wanted to let you know that it's perfectly okay, darling, we know your work is busy—"

"Mother!"

"—we're still completely supportive of you, and that we hope that Satan's Incubus isn't causing you too much trouble—"

Blaine lets out a long suffering sigh and pulls his fingers through his hair. "Mama, his name is Kurt. Kurt Hummel, not Satan's Incubus."

"That's what you've been calling him since your first day in the job, Blaine." Evangeline's voice is suddenly sharp. "What made you change your mind?"

"He's..." Blaine eyes the mountain of job applications that Kurt had given him earlier to sort through and file. "Well, he's definitely not an Incubus, I'd say." It's obvious that he's a little more than lost for words as he adds, "Probably more like a Succubus."

Evangeline scoffs. "Yes, well. Back to my first question, darling, are you coming or not?"

Blaine runs his finger along the lip of the beer bottle. "I am," he answers belatedly. "Yeah, I am."

"Why the sad voice, _anak_?" Evangeline asks, and Blaine can practically see her lips curling up around the Filipino word for "child".

Some child Blaine is, going about and marrying people out of convenience. Even worse, marrying people he despises while completely aware of all the consequences that could arise should things go badly. He remembers the Kurt's snakelike grin and a shudder travels down his spine just _thinking _having to walk down the aisle—no, scratch that, Kurt would probably want a forest wedding or something—with him waiting on the other end.

"I'm bringing my boyfriend!" Blaine blurts out suddenly. The lie feels bitter on his tongue. "I just...I really want you and Dad to meet him. And Elise, too."

"Also Brittany, don't forget about her," Evangeline reminds him. "Who's the boyfriend? Do I get to know?"

Blaine's exceedingly tempted to say no, no you can't, mother.

Evangeline huffs after a few seconds of silence save for the subtle static produced by the telephone receiver. "Well?"

"Kurt Hummel," Blaine replies in a small voice, and the tiny noise of disapproval he hears his mother make is enough to send jolts of guilt through his chest.

.:.

Kurt and Blaine find themselves on a plane bound for Columbus, Ohio a day later, using tickets Blaine had booked using Kurt's frequent flier miles.

Once the seatbelt sign is turned off and he's free to unlatch the stowable table from the back of the seat in front of him, Kurt's nose finds itself stuck in the folder Sylvester had given him as he quizzes Blaine on facts about himself.

"What's my favorite movie?"

Blaine, sitting in the seat next to Kurt, sighs and massages his temple. "It's a tie between _The Sound of Music_ and _Brokeback Mountain_, the latter of which you'd have liked better if it didn't steal your innocence at the, and I quote, 'tender and most delicate age of fifteen'."

Scoffing, Kurt turns the page and asks, "Favorite musical?"

"_Wicked_, and you've got an entire soundtrack devoted to song selections from the musical from your days in high school. You had the track list alphabetized by each of the respective Elphabas, from Eden Espinoza to Idina Menzel to Donna Vivino. You're also a huge fan of _Gypsy_."

Kurt lets out a noise equally as disdainful as the first and returns his information to the folder. "Oh, here's a good one. Am I allergic to anything?"

"Penicillin, cheap fabric, and anything with a human conscience," is all that Blaine can respond before Kurt shoots him a frighteningly poisonous look.

"Enough, Blaine," Kurt grumbles, closing the folder and leaning against his seat. "How do you even know all of these things about me? I don't even recall telling you some of them."

"I have to," Blaine says simply. "It's part of my job description. In fact, _you're_ the one who needs the studying, not me." He leans over, takes the folder from Kurt's lap, and cracks it open. "So I'll start by quizzing you. What's my favorite thing to do on a weekend?"

"Um..." Kurt stalls, struggling for an answer. "Do you like to go to the movies?"

"Incorrect," Blaine says in a robotic voice, and then he drops the charade. "I actually prefer to write songs in my apartment while wearing nothing but my boxer shorts."

Kurt glares at Blaine, who shrugs and continues with, "Oh, look at this one. Fantastic. What pet names do you use on me?"

"...you're kidding, right?" Kurt's left eyebrow drifts up millimeters away from his right one.

"No," Blaine says lightly. "It's actually a legitimate question that I think we need to answer together. We are engaged, after all."

"I hate affectionate names, Blaine. They're tacky and stupid."

"We'll just keep it simple. Out and about we may use the terms 'babe' and 'sweetheart'. In the bedroom, however..."

"_Blaine!_"

"I am obviously kidding, so calm down, _babe._"

Kurt crosses his arms and kicks the footrest down so that he can place his besocked feet on it. "Remind me why I chose you to get married to again?"

Blaine gives him a smile that can only be described as positively impish. "Because you admire my unwavering work ethic?"

"It's because you were the only one around, Blaine," Kurt supplies flatly. "I don't know what you think it was. It's not because I have a soft spot for you. It's not because I think you're attractive in any way, shape, or form."

Blaine's smile immediately fades as Kurt continues with his monologue.

"I think you're annoying as hell, Anderson. Our marital union was born out of and only out of the fact that you work for me and therefore would do anything for me. Think I'm incorrect? I'm not. I can hold any amount of details over your head, and you'd do whatever I asked. Are we clear?"

"Yes," Blaine mumbles.

"What did you say?"

Blaine turns to Kurt with a serious expression pulling at his face. "Yes, _sir_."

.:.

"Oh, _hell._"

"What is it now, Kurt?"

"Frickin' turbulence! Why the hell did you book a flight in the middle of a rainstorm?"

"But it's not storming, sir."

"Oh, God, I feel like—"

"Please don't—oh, shit!—there's a paper sack in the seat pocket in front of you, sir!"

"Don't talk to me, you bastard!"

"What are you talking about?"

"_You did this to me!_"

"I did not! You take that back right now, Kurt, swear to God!"

"..."

"Oh, God, did you just—oh my God. Breathe, Kurt, breathe. I have your moist towelettes—"

"It's getting _everywhere_! There's vomit on my _shoe,_ Blaine!"

"Just...breathe, sir."

"I can't breathe, Blaine, I can _smell the hydrochloric acid from my digestive tract!_"

"Um, okay?"

"..."

"_It'll be over soon enough_! Do you want puke on your new pair of Miss Me's?"

"Oh my God! Where are the towelettes? Blaine!"

.:.

When the airplane lands, Kurt has one hell of a time lugging two hard suitcases off of the baggage carousel and into a rickety metal trolley. Blaine finds that he can only stand by him, watching in amusement with only one compact duffel slung over his shoulder.

"Aw, I'm so proud, you packed light," Blaine says teasingly.

"Disrespect gets you nowhere, Anderson," Kurt grits out, hauling the last suitcase onto the trolley. "Now make yourself useful and push this." He pulls the trolley up to Blaine, who takes hold of the metal handle calmly. "Don't let anything fall, Blaine. All of my skin care products are in there, including my brand new Clarisonic brush. You break that, you die."

Kurt winks, adjusts his Hermes print scarf (Hermes, in his humble opinion, is the_ only_ brand that would ever make the color orange look good), and struts out of the airport. Blaine can't help but gape at his ass.

.:.

The car Blaine had rented off Thrifty is tiny, and Kurt's terribly miffed when he finds that his luggage takes up all of the space in the trunk.

"Doesn't matter," Blaine says, shoving his duffel into the passenger seat. "You can just take shotgun, sir. Besides, if you didn't, I'd look like your private chauffeur or something."

Kurt does as instructed, much to Blaine's surprise, just as Blaine slides into the driver's seat.

"Where's your house?" Kurt asks, idly toying with his watch.

Blaine coughs. "Upper Westerville. It's about thirty minutes from my old high school, Dalton Academy. And I know you don't like to talk about it, but it's like two hours away from McKinley in Lima."

"Don't talk about my high school days," Kurt commands, a flush rising high up on his cheeks. "Anyway. How long is it going to take to get there?"

"Half an hour, with this traffic. Why don't you spend this time asking me questions about myself so you don't fail the quiz next week?"

Kurt sighs and opens the folder on his lap dutifully. "Favorite food?"

"Mm, probably those clam steamers you can get from the pier in Maine for like, seven bucks. I've only been to Maine three times, though. My parents own a beach house there." Blaine pauses. "You should know that, because it'll be where we're honeymooning."

"Says who?"

"Says me, because we don't have a honeymoon budget and I like Maine."

"Where's the ceremony going to be, then?" Kurt's voice is sour. "My tastes are expensive."

"Haven't planned it yet. We'll get to that later. I promise you, Maine will be nice."

Kurt's getting annoyed, and instead directs his attention to his iPhone. He had downloaded the Vogue app the day before, and it's actually pretty interesting, since it allows users to post as many images of their looks as they desire. Kurt scrolls through each one. To his dismay, they just seem to be getting worse and worse. How awful.

Blaine lets out a dry chuckle.

"What is it?" Kurt inquires, his eyes never leaving his cell phone.

"Maine rhymes with Blaine," Blaine explains. "So of course it's going to be lovely."

Kurt merely shakes his head disdainfully.

They continue the car ride in silence, Kurt occasionally clucking his tongue at a particularly ugly ensemble (because really, boat shoes with skirts?) and Blaine humming abstract tunes to himself every so often; that is, until Kurt gets irked and snaps at Blaine to shut up and sing his precious melodies only in his head.

Finally, Kurt peeks his head out from his cell phone and asks, "Favorite way to drink your coffee?"

Blaine laughs humorlessly. "I take it black. Drip coffee's my favorite."

Kurt scoffs. "That's boring," he accuses.

"That's the way I take my coffee."

"It reflects upon your personality, Anderson. You're a dull person in general."

Blaine fights to keep his voice level. "My parents must be so disappointed in me. By the way, my house is to the left."

"Then why are you still drivi—holy _shit_...!"

Blaine's house, as it turns out, is like a mansion in size, and Blaine's simply driving past its enormous garden in order to pull into the equally large driveway.

The garden is impeccably groomed, with vibrant green grass spilling out all over like a carpet and interrupted only by the marble fountain standing in the middle of it all. The trees are flanked by stout topiary bushes trimmed in the shape of birds—all kinds of birds, Kurt notices, from a tiny little warbler to a statuesque falcon that looms over the entire plot of land.

"Damn, who _are_ you?" Kurt demands. Blaine shrugs as he parks the car and turns the engine off.

"My parents are rich," he replies simply.

"Obviously."

"I don't seem like a rich guy, though, do I?"

"It's mainly because you work as a personal assistant to a fashion businessman instead of, oh, I don't know. Heading a huge law firm, or something."

"Oh, hell, sir, I wouldn't be able to head a law firm. I majored in business and I'm only twenty-eight."

Kurt smirks. "I'm twenty-eight and I'm the head of a large fashion company. It just goes to show that age _really is_ just a number."

Blaine murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like, "No, it's just that you're a complete pushy ass."

Kurt raises an eyebrow at Blaine. "Sorry, what was that?"

"Nothing," Blaine replies innocently. "I just said that it's because you were at the top of your class."

"Of course I was," Kurt says smugly. "So what did you tell your parents?"

"I told them that I'm bringing my surprise boyfriend in to meet them. Told them that you're special and that you've been dying to meet them." Blaine bites his lip. "You should probably know a few things."

"What things?"

"Things like..." Blaine looks up and furrows his brow, clucking his tongue in thought. "Well, my mom's name is Evangeline, and she's kind of an alpha female, so try not to get her angry. She may look all round and friendly, but she has the tendency to bite the heads off of people she disagrees with. But she cooks really well. She's the one you've got to thank for all of the delicious food you'll get to feast upon at Anderson Manor. Just don't...don't get on her bad side."

"Your house has a _name?" _Kurt's attention has been waning until he heard the word "manor" slip off of Blaine's tongue.

"That's all you got from that?" Blaine asks in disbelief. "Of course it has a name. Anyway, yes. About my father...my dad's a little bit more reluctant than my mom regarding my homosexuality, so tone it down a little bit around him."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just don't...don't sass with him. He's a pretty stern man, so his presence alone'll shut you up. It's not too bad, though, you won't see that much of him. He spends most of his time working in his office. Oh, and his name is Richard. Call him Mr. Anderson, though." Blaine pauses, a small, secret smile forming on his lips at the thought of the last member of his family. "I've also got a sister named Elise, and she's coming in for the weekend, so you'll get to meet her. She's currently studying medicine at Tulane."

"Is that all I need to know?"

Blaine pauses and mulls over all of the information. "...yes. For now, at least."

Blaine looks appeased, so Kurt unbuckles his seatbelt and pushes open the car door.

"Kurt—wait!"

Kurt pokes his head into the car through the open door. "What is it now, Blaine?"

Blaine steps out of the car and walks right up to a very frustrated Kurt.

"Your tie's gone all wonky," he says, adjusting Kurt's tie with deft fingers and leaning in so close that Kurt can smell his peppermint gum. "There we go, it's fine now."

Kurt's face reddens. Had his tie really been that noticeably disheveled? And why had Blaine cared so much?

"Go inside," Kurt commands, nodding his head towards the door.

"It's my house, you can't tell me what to do," Blaine counters, but he decides to just go with it anyway—Kurt had been bearable during the car ride, and he doesn't want to ruin his attitude before taking him in to meet his family. He takes Kurt's hand and leads him to the porch.

Not to his surprise, Kurt is the one who reaches out his hand and rings the doorbell.

He's surprised when a beautiful woman opens the door. She has Blaine's eyes—or rather, Blaine has _her_ eyes, but not their color, and while she's rounded in shape and very petite, there's some sharpness present in her features, too, in the angular cut of her jawline and her shoulders. There's something about her that immediately draws Kurt's attention—this woman is obviously Evangeline Anderson, and any reluctance had to have been well-hidden because she looks absolutely ecstatic to see Blaine and his new _boyfriend_.

"Blaine," is all she says, and Blaine's in her arms, swaying back and forth with the force of her embrace. Kurt stands off to the side a little awkwardly, examining his nail beds as the adorable mother-son scene plays out before him.

It takes a while, but Blaine manages to ease himself out of Evangeline's arms.

Evangeline cocks her head to the side. "This must be Kurt," she says after a few seconds of scrutinizing.

Kurt automatically feels very overdressed in his Zegna blazer and suede leather Oxfords. Blaine is standing beside him in a pair of jeans and a button-down, while Evangeline is wearing a simple cotton maxi dress that bunches up at her slight feet.

For a moment, Kurt is hit with the sudden fear that the Andersons won't _like_ him. What if that's the case? Then he would definitely get deported and sent back to Europe, and he would owe all of his misfortunes to a tiny Eurasian family living out in the middle of the boonies in Ohio.

Kurt really doesn't want that at all.

Something else Kurt really doesn't desire is a hug from Blaine's overeager mother, but that doesn't seem to do him any good, since the woman was already sidling up to him and wrapping her stubby little arms around his waist.

"You're very handsome," she says finally after Kurt wriggles out of the hug. "And I love your shoes. The detailing on them is lovely."

Kurt smiles, relieved that he had found a small window of connection with Blaine's mother via fashion. "They're fabulous, aren't they—?"

Blaine claps his hands together, effectively cutting off any of Kurt's long-winded monologues regarding fashion and the delights of belted sweaters. "Okay, then!" he says enthusiastically. "Mama, why don't we go inside and give Kurt a bit of a tour around the house?"

"_Fab_ulous proposal," Evangeline concedes, and Kurt exchanges a quick nervous look with Blaine, who merely shrugs and tugs his happy-as-a-clam fiance into the gargantuan house.

Evangeline leads the pair down a short hallway and into the lounge, where several cocktail glasses of appletinis are waiting for them atop a glass coffee table. Kurt is vaguely impressed with the house decorations—they're eclectic, and by the time Kurt feels that he's gotten a proper grip on the theme, a new piece appears and throws him off completely.

For example, there's a portrait of the Anderson family that depicts Evangeline and what Kurt assumes to be Mr. Anderson sitting close to each other and a much younger Blaine still plagued with the horrors of adolescence crouching down beside his father, wearing some kind of hideous red-and-navy school uniform confection. On the ground, there's a little girl in a plaid jumper, smiling vapidly, arm slung around Blaine's leg playfully.

Kurt doesn't really get it. Perhaps the Andersons were going for the avant-garde nature of day-by-day monotony?

"Have an appletini, sweetheart," Evangeline offers, picking up a glass daintily and wrapping Kurt's fingers around the stem. She turns to smile at her son fondly. "Blaine, I'll just have Brittany bring in your luggage. Just give me the keys to the car."

"Thanks," Blaine says gratefully, pressing the car keys into the warm hands of his mother.

After Evangeline scurries off, her long skirt fluttering behind her, Kurt takes a sip of appletini and asks, "So who's Brittany? Anyone I should know?"

Blaine rubs his hands together, deep in thought. "Our...well, I suppose you could call her our maid, but she's really much more than that. She had a bit of a falling out at the community college—actually, she failed out of her journalism class completely—so we took her in and now she's like family," Blaine replies, dragging a finger along the rim of his cocktail glass. "Ugh, these appletinis suck."

"I think they're delicious and refreshing," Kurt says defensively, but Blaine is already striding over to the kitchen, and Kurt finds himself with no choice but to follow him. "Where are you going? Blaine!"

When Kurt catches up, he sees Blaine rummaging around a huge metal refrigerator that dominates the west side of the kitchen ("This is one of the two kitchens we've got," Blaine explains. "And it's my favorite because it's where my dad hides all of his Pilsner.") He emerges with a beer in his hand, already taking the cap off with his teeth.

"That's completely crass," Kurt says contemptuously. Blaine shrugs and swills the beer around in his mouth as the door to the kitchen swings open with an unceremonious clatter.

Evangeline is back, this time with a tall, willowy blonde at her side.

"Who's this?" Kurt asks.

"I'm Brittany," the girl says softly, and Kurt felt instantly feels like he's fallen out of his depth, because Brittany is all limbs and skinny as a model, with a pert little mouth and large, watery blue eyes. "There was a squirrel hiding under Blaine's car."

"...what?"

"You clearly left the squirrel in the car. That's cruel."

Blaine frowns and takes Brittany aside. "Look, Brit, it's okay. It was probably just a wild squirrel from the woods or something. Kurt wouldn't be able to carry a squirrel with him, let alone take a car ride with it—he's actually allergic to most things with fur." He grins. "Or at least that's what he claims."

"I'll try to stay away from him, then, even if he is pretty," Brittany replies quietly, shoulders dropping dramatically, and she slinks away and out of the kitchen. Kurt's gaze follows her, jaw beginning to ache from being dropped for so long.

"Blaine," he hisses. "Blaine, we need her."

"Whatever for?" Evangeline asks curiously, wheeling around and swiping the bottle of beer away from her son's hands. She takes a quick sip and then hands it back to Blaine. "Don't drink too much," she warns. "It'll spoil your appetite for later."

"Kurt's been looking for a model for ages," Blaine explains, ignoring his mother's cautionary advice and chugging down more beer. "He kind of gets that way around pretty girls. And Brittany, you know, fits the cookie cutter. Tall, leggy blonde, and all of that."

"Oh," Evangeline says. "Well, that's up to whatever Brittany wants. I've recently been thinking that she's really far too talented to waste her life helping out the Anderson family."

"Really? What else does she do?" Kurt questions, plucking the apple wedge out of his cocktail glass and popping into his mouth, feeling the tart taste spread across his tongue.

"She teaches at the local dance studio, mostly, but she can carry a tune. She's been singing with Blaine since high school," Evangeline says with a smile. "I actually thought they had a thing going—of course, back then I didn't know that Brittany wasn't exactly Blaine's type."

"Nope," Blaine says pleasantly. "I'm all about the males now."

Kurt glares at him, but Evangeline doesn't seem to notice.

"So," Evangeline says, leaning her elbow against the edge of the kitchen counter. "What exactly do you do, Kurt?"

"Mama, that's not really—" Blaine begins, but Kurt is quick to silence him with his palm.

Kurt leans in and tells her, "I'm the executive officer of a fashion design company. You've probably heard that Blaine's my private assistant; I don't know what I'd do without him. I'd probably go insane. There's only a certain amount of espadrilles you can look at before your eyes get tired of them."

"He likes to exploit my eyes," Blaine explains weakly.

Evangeline nods slowly in understanding and Blaine moves to stand a bit too close to Kurt, arm pressed flush against his waist. Kurt scowls and bats him away—anyone who knew about their special arrangement would find their body language hideously awkward, but those left unaware (read: Evangeline Anderson) would read it as playful teasing.

"I'll just be showing you two to your room now," she says finally.

"That won't be necessary," Kurt says quickly. "Blaine already booked a hotel room for me before we left New York City."

"Oh, don't be silly," she replies, with a knowing wink. "You think I don't know that you share a room with Blaine? Believe me, you've got more chemistry than you'd ever believe."

"Pardon?"

"Blaine's obviously crazy about you," Evangeline said. "Follow me down the hallway, Blaine, your father's letting you two take the guest room."

Kurt deigns to follow the crazy Asian Evangeline down the hallway with Blaine's hand looped reflexively around his.

.:.

"This is _beautiful_," Blaine gapes, looking around the room in awe. "I love the way you coordinated the curtains with the bedsheets, mama."

Kurt's less than jazzed at the prospect of sharing a room with the man he miserably detests. The taste of the appletini in his mouth has long grown sour, his feet have grown swollen in his shoes, and he just wants to sleep for ages while Blaine gets roasted slowly on an open fire.

But Blaine is right, all things considered. The window on east side of the room is draped with sky blue curtains that compliment the beautiful embroidery on the sheets laid over a birchwood bed frame. The bed's huge, with plenty of cushy throw pillows sitting at its head and thickly-woven blankets folded neatly on top of them. The general appearance of the bed only increases Kurt's decidedly wanton desire to throw himself upon it and sleep for days.

Brittany's also appeared again, without warning, and Kurt wonders if that was something he would have to get used to.

"I know that you're going to be having some sexy times in here," Brittany tells Kurt very seriously, flicking the pom-pom on her aviator hat out of her eyes, "And I don't want Blaine getting pregnant any time soon. So I brought you some condoms." She leans in so close that Kurt can feel her breath tickling the shell of his ear. "I had to take them from my collection, but there you go."

Kurt smacks his face into his palm, and Blaine turns red as a tomato.

"Brittany!" Evangeline cries. "You weren't supposed to tell them about that!"

"Is this like when you told me not to tell them about the flavored lube you hid in the dresser?"

There's no way that a girl could be so dense, Kurt thinks to himself.

"_Brittany!_"

Or maybe there is.

.:.

When Kurt gingerly steps out of the bathroom in nothing but a pair of silk Emporio Armani boxers and a stunningly off-the-shoulder oversized t-shirt, Blaine isn't sure whether to marvel at the sight of Kurt's pale shoulders or wonder why the hell he'd bring pajamas like that to Blaine's house.

"Are those _seriously_ your pajamas?" Blaine asks from his seat at the desk, making his staring even more obvious as his eyes trail up and down the bright red fabric of Kurt's shirt. "Why would you—what were you...?"

"I was thinking that I'd have a hotel room to myself," Kurt says flatly as he attempts to pull up the neckline of his shirt. "It's comfortable and I like it for when I'm _alone_." Kurt winces as more of the fabric pools around his shoulders. "Look, Blaine. Let me borrow another t-shirt."

"No," Blaine says happily. "I refuse. My house, my rules."

Kurt scowls.

"Your chest fine, Kurt, there's nothing wrong with it," Blaine tells him exasperatedly. "Last time I checked you had two nipples, just like me." Kurt looks down, panicked, and sees that the shirt's rapidly slipping south, so far that his nipples are indeed showing. Blaine winks at him and begins lifting cushions off of the bed.

"What do you think you're doing?" Kurt demands, marching up to Blaine and tapping him on the shoulder angrily.

"...getting ready to sleep in my bed?"

"Don't you dare," Kurt says, ripping the comforter off the top of the bed and tossing it onto the carpeted floor along with several throw pillows. "You. Onto the floor. Now."

Blaine grimaces. "I guess it makes sense that you wouldn't want to share a bed, but this is just cruel."

Kurt pushes another fluffy pillow into Blaine's arms and tugs him in the direction of the makeshift bed. "Go, Anderson, before I fire you!"

"This is not my workplace!" Blaine counters, his hands balling up into fists.

"It is while I'm in the same room as you!" Kurt grabs his copy of _Vogue_ from the bedside table, rolls it up, and begins to continuously whack Blaine on the head with it.

"Ow! _Ow! _What the hell? Stop that!"

"Now, Blaine!" Thwack. "Go–" Thwack. "To—" Thwack. "Sleep!" Thwack.

Blaine tries to grab the magazine from Kurt's hands, but Kurt smiles slyly and holds it up just out of his reach. Goddamn their height difference, Blaine thinks, pouting like a child and retreating to his bed on the floor.

"That is your space," Kurt says, pointing to the small six-foot by six-foot lot of land at the foot of the bed. "The rest is my space. And don't you forget it, or I will _shave your head_."

Kurt, satisfied now, snuggles into the comforter and snaps his eye covers onto his head. Blaine huffs out a defeated sigh and collapses onto the floor.

_Chiiiiirp._

A bird. Really?

_Tweet. Tweet-tweet. Chiiiiirp._

"Blaine," Kurt murmurs into his pillow. "Make it stop. Make the bloody thing stop."

_Tweet._

Kurt shoots up in his bed, ripping his eye mask off. "BLAINE!" he whines petulantly. "Make it shut the hell up!"

Blaine sits up in bed, his curls already flattened on one side. "What? That's just Pavarotti, our canary." He points towards the corner and sure enough there's a golden cage sitting on the large wardrobe by the bathroom door. "We keep him in the guest room because he likes the window."

_Chiiiirp_.

Kurt raises an eyebrow at Blaine and gives him a glare so vicious that Blaine's forced to amble out of his crappy makeshift bed in order put an old washcloth over Pavarotti's cage.

.:.

_Blaine is kissing him, has him pressed up against the bed frame with his curls all disheveled and the most satisfied smirk on his face. Kurt can only liken the kisses to copper wire pressed up against the battery; Blaine is the wire, Kurt is the battery, and he can feel the jolts of electricity racing through his veins whenever Blaine's lips touch his skin, feel the curve of Blaine's smile whenever he gasps a little at the sensation—_

_ "Marry me," Blaine whispers against the dip of skin between Kurt's neck and collarbone._

.:.

A knock at the door jolts Kurt out of his slumber, and in his sleepy daze he manages to stumble out of the too-cushy bed and onto the floor. He swears he can still feel the heat of Blaine's kisses against his jawline, against his collarbone.

Reality tells him that it was a dream.

That would be when he realizes that his pretend fiance is sleeping on the floor when they really should be sharing the bed, all pressed up against each other and cuddly, like penguins in the middle of the coldest winter in Antarctica.

"Blaine!" he hisses, and then cocks his head upward. "Just a minute, Mrs. Anderson! Uh, one moment, please!"

There is the sound of Evangeline's voice on the other side of the door, a brief, knowing chuckle.

"Blaine!"

"Muh huh...wha'? Kurt?"

"Parents! Outside door! We are supposed to be engaging in hot rabbit sex right around now! Get in bed! _Now!_"

Kurt manages to pull a stumbling Blaine onto the mattress without knocking over anything, and he doesn't even protest when Blaine sleepily wraps an arm around Kurt's shoulders and snuggles in far too close for his liking. The feeling reminds him too much of the dream—no, the _nightmare_ he had the night before.

"Wha' you wan' me to do, Kurt?" Blaine asks, shifting his position with a lazy grin on his face and propping his head up on his hand.

Kurt scowls. He can count all of Blaine's eyelashes and feel the stubble on his chin. "Stop that—just, oh for the love of God, _spoon me or something_!"

There is a frenzy of motion as Kurt tries to spoon Blaine and Blaine tries to spoon Kurt (a particularly awkward situation that results in both men facing each other, bumping noses and foreheads), but eventually Kurt settles down with the idea of Blaine spooning him—

Of course, that's until he feels something _hard_ from down south pressing into his thigh.

"Oh, hell, Blaine!" he shrieks, curling his thighs into his chest and away from Blaine's apparent morning erection.

"What? It's morning!" Blaine exclaims defensively. "Just—ugh, mother, you can come in if you want."

Evangeline and Brittany, as it turns out, had been waiting outside the room with omelets on hot silver platters.

"I brought breakfast!" Evangeline calls in a sing-song voice, walking into the room and positively _beaming_ at the sight of her son all shacked up with his noticeably disheveled boss. "I get the feeling that you're the type of guy who appreciates a good egg-white omelet, Kurt. After all, they're delicious. I had Brittany get the basil from the garden this morning."

"Breakfast is so confusing..." Brittany's mumbling as she pours green juice into two glasses from a pitcher, and Blaine nods sympathetically, humoring her.

"Well if that isn't the cutest thing I've ever seen or what...?"

Kurt's head snaps up in the direction of the doorway. A girl dressed in cargo pants and a simple t-shirt stands there, rocking on her heels, just as round as her mother and with dark hair that curls in tight ringlets around her cheeks.

"Elise," Blaine says warmly, unwinding his arms from Kurt's midsection and pushing himself off of the bed. "So glad you could make it."

"Whoa there, Blaine, have you been working out?" Elise asks playfully, pulling her older brother into a tight bear hug and squeezing his bicep. She looks up at Kurt. "Hey, there, uh...I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

"Kurt Hummel," Kurt Hummel says, feeling ridiculously bare in his pajamas. He really wants to get out of bed, but he doesn't want to be walking around Blaine's family in nothing but his underwear and a scandalous top. Doesn't want the Andersons to think he's a skank or something. "And you're Blaine's little sister? Elise, right?"

"That'd be me," she confirms with a devilish grin that reminds Kurt too much of her older brother's. "I heard that Blaine was going to be in town, and I _simply_ had to come. Then I heard that he's been dating his boss, and I _absolutely_ had to come, so I drove up from school to visit you."

"That's so sweet," Kurt says blankly.

Beat.

"You're very handsome," Elise says earnestly. "Look that that skin. So clear, isn't it, mom?"

The Andersons are eventually going to kill Kurt. They're simply too sweet, too idyllic, too perfect, and Kurt's just _there_ like a wolf among sheep, using poor Blaine as a cover for his own troubles.

Kurt lets out a nervous laugh, throws caution to the wind, and ambles off the bed. The women don't seem to notice or particularly care about the fact that he's strutting about in nothing but his knickers; for the matter, neither did Blaine. Of, course that's until Brittany murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like, "I'm so turned on right now...", but Kurt goes along with it and pretends that he didn't hear it.

"Mm, what's in this green juice?" he asks, taking a quick sip of the bright liquid.

Elise shrugs offhandedly. "Who the hell knows? It's delicious though, right?"

"Definitely," Kurt agrees fervently. He doesn't protest when Brittany steps out of the room to retrieve a bathrobe for Kurt, and then sneaks up behind him to drape the fabric around his body.

Blaine laughs at that. "Kurt's secretly a nudist."

"There is nothing wrong with his body, so we're fine with it, honestly," Elise declares with a low chuckle that sounds just like Blaine's laugh. "Anyway, Kurt, I've decided to take you out for the afternoon. I got clearance with Blaine last night, actually."

A shiver shoots through Kurt's spine. A girl's day out? With _Elise_? He doesn't even know the girl, and he's already generally annoyed by her presence.

"Wait, where's Blaine going?" Kurt questions, mentally racking through ideas that would allow him to skip on the outing altogether.

Evangeline's eyes are absolutely sparkling as she tells Kurt, "Oh, sweetheart, Blaine already told us about your engagement." She smiles faintly. "We wanted to keep our knowing a surprise so that Blaine could talk with his father about it, too. Elise was planning on taking you out..."

Kurt pulls Blaine in a little closer. "_Blaine!"_ he grouses, but Blaine just shoots him an innocent smile and goes back to eating slices of spicy pork sausage.

"...because we've decided to throw a little party at Anderson Manor, and he's planning on announcing your engagement there!"

Well, damn.

Kurt instantly gives a hollow laugh and doubled over, making sure to stamp on Blaine's foot hard on his way down. "Oh, baby, you shouldn't have!" he cries, applying more pressure to Blaine's foot, hoping that the pain would perhaps cause him to fall over and die.

Blaine winces but then straightens up. "Well, I did!" he responds happily, and Brittany claps three times behind him, each clap punctuated by an enthusiastic fist pump.

"C'mon, Kurt," Elise whispers conspiratorially. "We can finish breakfast,you can get dressed, and I'll take you out for some drinks."

The sound of that makes Kurt exceptionally anxious. "This early?"

"Sure, babe," Blaine leans over to whisper in Kurt's ear in a low voice. He grins impishly and pats Kurt on the rear. "Get some clothes on first, though."

"Hey, hey, Blaine?" Kurt murmurs back, his voice full of bite. "One more touch to my ass and I swear to God I will_ castrate you_."

.:.

**Up next: Kurt goes to a stripclub with Elise, Blaine addresses his marriage woes to his father, and Kurt and Blaine see each other naked for the first time. Scared yet? **

**The feedback for the first chapter was absolutely lovely. I cannot even express the gratitude I feel for all of those who were kind enough to leave me a review.**

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	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Glee or the Proposal.

**Read Me**: I've been gone for two weeks on a bit of a summer vacation, which explains the delay in fanfiction updates! Hopefully things will get all squared away by the time school starts.

_"If you touch my ass one more time I will cut your balls off in your sleep, okay?"_

_"If you ever grab my ass again, I will kill you!"_

_"Hand. Off. Ass."_

—_Margaret Tate, The Proposal_

**III**

"You're one hell of a lucky man, Kurt," Elise shouts over the ruckus of the bar. KC and the Sunshine Band is playing on the huge silver speakers placed on opposite sides of the room as Kurt tentatively sips at a vodka tonic ("I don't want the smell of alcohol on my breath," he had explained) and Elise swills hard lemonade around in her mouth with a dangerously loopy expression decorating her face. Brittany's there, too, idly sipping at a fluffy white pina colada and leaning against the bar languidly.

Kurt looks up from his drink, baffled. "Why would you say that?" he asks, simultaneously shoving away unbidden thoughts about Blaine and how nice his arms had felt earlier in bed, strong and secure. "He's ridiculous. Also, he smells bad sometimes."

"_Everyone_ smells bad sometimes," Brittany points out, motioning with her almost empty glass. There is thin layer of foam atop her upper lip like a mustache, and neither Kurt nor Elise has the heart to tell her.

Elise had changed into a bright yellow shirt dress with a flared collar and rolled up sleeves, and she looks positively bubbly as she replies, "Blaine's always had this amazing work ethic. Plus, he's not too bad on the eyes. I mean, he takes after all of the good qualities of mom and dad." She pounds her empty glass on the bar table. "Bartender! Hit me with some tequila, why don't you?" She screws up her face in concentration. "Actually, make that a Guinness, I kind of feel like taking a really long nap this afternoon, anyway."

The bartender gives her a lascivious wink and busily procures a pint of beer from the tap.

"Anyway, Kurt," Elise continues, leaning back against her chair and sniffing her new Guinness suspiciously, "You're not too bad on the eyes, either. Plus you seem grounded, good for Blaine. You know? Keep his head out of the clouds."

Kurt nods blankly, lips set in a grim line, and notices that Brittany's slunk off to a dark corner of the bar, where a catlike Latina girl with dark eyebrows is perched on her lap and pressing kisses into her neck. With gusto.

Elise lets out a low whistle. "That's Santana, Brit's on-again, off-again sex buddy-slash-girlfriend," she says. "Brit's also got a boyfriend, but she doesn't like to talk about him all that much. I guess it's just complicated."

"They're both beautiful girls," Kurt says honestly. "If they ever need a job, they could definitely look into the modeling business. I could set them up for a few photoshoots if they wanted—nothing too major, maybe just for the catalogues of more obscure brands. Start them off small, I don't know." He closes his mouth, immediately feeling ridiculous. "I mean...God, that was stupid. Pretend I didn't say anything there."

"See, that's ironic," Elise slurs around her beer. "But I'm gonna be frank here. Both girls are positively sex _fiends_."

Kurt remains silent and cards his finger through his bangs.

"You'd know all about that, though, wouldn't you, Kurt?" asks Elise teasingly, bumping her fist against Kurt's shoulder with a smirk. "Blaine and you've been getting it on, I can tell. He's been glowing lately. You make him really happy."

Kurt laughs, but the motion feels more hollow than warm. "Lots of things make that boy happy," he finally says. "He gets happy when he does his job properly, or when he's punched out all of the holes in his frequent customer card for Pinkberry."

"Boy loves his Pinkberry," Elise agrees with a buzzed sort of giggle.

Kurt shrugs. "How could you not? Frozen yogurt is delicious. Also healthy."

In the background, KC and the Sunshine Band stops playing immediately and the lights of the bar dim so low that Kurt can't see more than four feet in front of him. Annoyed, he sets his drink down and scanned the bar, pupils dilating owlishly—

_Oh_.

That.

The left side of the bar has a disturbing black stage in an enclave, complete with cheap, flickering strobe lights and a particularly dangerous looking set of holographic silver curtains swaying slightly in the breeze of the air conditioning. The enclave-stage, Kurt notes with distaste, is currently housed by a confident looking Indian man propped up against a black wooden chair, dressed only in his underwear and a vest and tie.

"You took me to one of _those_ bars?" Kurt demands, staring at the man's back-fat in dismay. "Really? Really. It's barely _noon_, Elise!" He lets out a choked sputter. "You are _just_ like your brother," he murmurs to himself.

Elise shakes her head rapidly, curls flying in and out of Kurt's range of vision. "Aw, naw, Kurt, that's just Figgins. He's the show, but he doesn't show that much skin—whoop! there goes the tie." She smiles vacantly, her pint of Guinness more than halfway gone. "He doesn't take off his underwear, or anything. No penis." Elise holds up two fingers in a cross. "No penis."

"_Let's get physical, physical_," Olivia Newton John warbles from the stereo as Figgins jumps into a demented plie and begins to perform a pseudo-raunchy striptease, unmentionable body parts jiggling about. Kurt can only stare the the man in disbelief—slightly heavyset and perhaps a bit too old to be performing at bars in the middle of Westerville, whatever sort of a hick town Westerville might be (which is to say, not a hick town at all, but Kurt's judgement's been clouded by a couple glasses of dry alcohol and a feeling of inexplicable panic). "_Let me hear your body talk_," Olivia continues, unrelenting, and Figgins rips off the vest with a triumphant cry and stands before the audience of amused middle-aged women in only his underwear.

"Shit, that burns," Kurt sputters, shielding his eyes with his glass of vodka. "_Please_ tell me I'm not going to see penis today. Please!"

Elise lets out an inebriated laugh that sounds just as frightening as the way Figgins looks. "He's fan-fucking-tastic is what's up, Kurt," she sings loudly in time with Olivia Newton John. "Woo! Go, Figgins!" She stabs a finger in Kurt's general direction. "Take him! Take him, he's gay and newly engaged!"

Figgins seems genuinely excited as he salsas his way offstage and pulls very disgruntled Kurt through the bar and sets a completely heinous wedding veil upon his head, engaging in enthusiastic pelvic thrusts the entire way down.

"Excuse me," Kurt says, attempting to lift the veil from his head and collapsing into the chair set at center stage, "But I'm not planning on being the girl in my relationship at all. I refuse to wear a—oh my God, please stop that."

Figgins has a frenzied look on his face as he mounts the chair and begins to thrust his hips in all sorts of directions, some of which seem to be illegal in most countries.

"_Let's get physical, physical," _Olivia insists like the half-baked 80s vixen she is.

Kurt stands up abruptly and scurries back to the bar with no help at all from Elise or Brittany as the music ends, followed by raucous laughter and applause from everyone in the bar except him. As the lights come back on and all of Figgins' articles of clothing are salvaged, business cards rain through the air like ninja stars. Kurt reluctantly catches one, flips it over, and nearly gags at what he finds.

_"A Figgins for all occasions—birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, bachelorette parties, and more!_

_Sponsored by Mumbai Airlines. Visit .com to watch a video on how to prevent clots in flight with anti-embolism stockings!"_

.:.

"Don't do this, Richard," Evangeline says just as Blaine enters the sitting room. "Don't cast your son aside because he works hard or he loves too much—_oh!_ Blaine."

Richard Anderson is seated on the leather sofa wearing nothing but a suit and a poker face. "I know," he tells his wife solemnly. "I think it'd be best if you left now." Evangeline looks at him with sad eyes, but shakes her head and complies. Her skirts billows as she walks out of the door. Once she's gone, Richard shifts in his seat and gazes straight at Blaine. "Son. I heard about your...proposal."

"Excuse me?" Blaine asks, plopping down on the seat next to his father unceremoniously.

Richard sighs. "Your engagement to your boss. I suppose it would have been nice if you had talked to me about it beforehand."

"I'm twenty-eight, Father, I have a job, and a house, and I'm fully grown. I..." Blaine's eyes find Richard's. "I don't need to ask you about anything. You've never played too big of a role in my life. I was under the impression that you wanted to keep it that way."

There's a dangerous glint in Richard's bright hazel eyes. "_Don't_ assume things, Blaine!" he scolds, the volume of his voice rising sharply.

Blaine frowns. "What do you want from me? An apology?"

"Of course I want an apology! How do you think I feel, being alienated from _my own family_ and coming back to find that my firstborn _son_ is getting married to a _man_?"

Blaine sets his lips in a hard grimace. "Oh, really? You never seemed to care before. About my sexuality."

Richard settles back down into his chair. "I don't. Not...not really. But a discussion beforehand would have been _nice_—"

"You know what?" Blaine says, sharply rising from his chair. "I've been working for Kurt Hummel for more than a year and a half now. We met, we fell in love, four months—" Blaine's grasping at straws and coming up with lies on the spot. "Four months ago he proposed. I said yes. You've been aware of my sexuality since freshman year, high school, and if I recall correctly, it was _you_ who paid for Dalton tuition so I could be safe. So I could be myself!"

"I am your _father_!" Richard bellows. "I refuse to have no part in the life of my son!"

"I never said you _didn't!"_

"Oh, yes?" Richard asks, his tone growing dangerously soft. "It feels like I don't."

Blaine sighs and takes three paces to the right of his father. "I don't know what you want. You seem to think that you deserve something from me—"

"That would be because I _do_."

"And what would that be?"

"A place in your life that's not riddled with _Kurt_ and _work_ and _useless victimization—"_

_ "You think that I'm lying about everything_?"

Richard stops in his tracks. "It sure seems like you are," he says.

"I'm going to stop you right there," Blaine says quietly, refusing to look his father straight in the eye. "You don't deserve anything from me. You're not a part of my life because you never chose to be." He crosses his arms over one another. "For every moment that you made me feel good about myself as a kid, there were five other situations in which you made me feel like _shit_."

Beat.

"I'm going to go now," Richard says gruffly. "I'll be at the golf course. And Blaine?"

Blaine sighs. "Yes, father?"

"This isn't over."

.:.

Kurt needs to get the stench of the stripper Figgins off of his body, and he needs to get it off presently, so stepping into a piping hot shower feels intuitive and almost welcoming, even as the hot water droplets fizz against his skin, leaving bright red marks in their wake. He very seldom takes burning hot showers because of how they mark up his skin, but he's just been practically assaulted by a stripper. Kurt's allowing for some leeway here.

Blaine's taken the liberty of unpacking all of Kurt's toiletries for him, so it's disarmingly easy to just reach into the shower rack and grab his usual Fekkai shampoo, lathering it up and making a little mohawk out of his hair with the suds before washing it off completely. All the while, he sings a cut of a fourteen-minute Celine Dion melody in order to time himself, scrubbing himself with apricot shower gel and a loofah until the second verse and rinsing himself clean by the bridge. "_Je suis tout ce que je suis__, parce que tu m'as aimée_," he sings, rubbing his chin with Aveeno shave cream and running his Gillette four-blade razor across the foam, blubbering up only a little bit when soap ends up in his mouth. Once he's finished shaving, he finally turns off the water jets and stepping out of the shower.

.:.

Blaine's frustrated, so obviously he's burning off his anger by jumping some intensely ferocious rope in the backyard of Anderson Manor. Sweat is dripping down and stinging at his eyes, but he keeps up with the the rotations, jumping rope like a complete master.

"Blaine. You are going to get through this, you're going to like it. Kurt Hummel is a piece of sweet ass, even though he's the most annoying little shit ever," he's muttering to himself as he whips the jump rope above his head more times than he can count, completely aware of the stupidity of every single word that falls from his lips. "You're going to be fine, your parents are going to be fine. Who knows, maybe the relationship will work out. Maybe the sex will be awesome."

Blaine recalls the way Kurt had shied away from his embarrassingly obvious morning wood.

"Okay, so the guy probably wouldn't want to be even a foot near your dick. That's fine, we were never planning on consummating the marriage anyway..."

He whips the jump rope over his head and somehow manages to get in two whole jumps in one rotation. "Just...be happy for me, be okay with my sexuality, why did I have to talk to him today about this stupid engagement and why...? Why?"

Stopping in his movements, Blaine sets aside his jump rope and tries to quiet his pounding heartbeat. He's overdone it, and he can already feel the burning sensation in his calves and thighs.

"You know what, Blaine?" he asks himself, wrapping his jump rope around his forearm and wiping his sweaty brow off with a towel, "You're going to take a shower. You're going to get clean, and you're going to get ready for your upcoming wedding with a charming, dapper smile on your face."

And with that, Blaine sticks his headphones into his ears, blasts some Maroon 5, and climbs up the steps into the balcony of his and Kurt's bedroom.

.:.

There aren't any towels in the bathroom, Kurt soon realizes as he steps out of the shower cubicle feeling ridiculously bare and, well, wet, his hair flopping ridiculously over his forehead like a dead fish.

"Stupid Andersons," Kurt mumbles, opening the cupboard under the sink. The entire space is empty, save for an extra roll of toilet paper and a bottle of Summer's Eve feminine wash. Whatever that's there for. "So unprepared, so stupid, so—"

Oh. Blaine had said the towels were in the bedroom cabinet just a few hours ago, right before he ducked out of the room with a devious kiss to Kurt's forehead and a smirk on his face.

Kurt laughs at his own stupidity and carefully opens the bathroom door. He sticks his head out—there isn't anyone in his bedroom, save for Pavarotti in his golden cage, looking at him placidly and chirping every so often, the light catching in his tiny, beady black eyes.

"Shut up, you stupid bird," Kurt says dismissively, catching sight of the towels; bleached white terry cloth with indigo stitching, all piled into the shelf next to Pavarotti's cage. "I just need a towel."

Kurt hunches over and attempts to shield his crotch from the watchful eye of Blaine's canary with one of the decorative fabric squares that had been piled on the bathroom sink.

_Chiiiiiirp._

"Stop that!"

_Chiiiirp-tweet. Tweeeeeeet._

The bird titters to itself steadfastly, as if amused by the desperation of Kurt's situation. Pavarotti's sharp trills practically box Kurt in the ears worse than nails on a chalkboard. Kurt's frustration, then, can only grow as Pavarotti begins to strategically slip pieces of birdseed through the bars of its cage.

Kurt scowls as various nuts and seeds scatter themselves into his damp hair. "Wise ass," he mutters, brushing at his hair angrily.

.:.

Blaine stands on the balcony of his bedroom, music blaring in his ears through the headphones of his iPod and hands resting on the wooden enclosure.

"I am in misery," he sings along, voice breaking slightly on the last syllable. "There ain't nobody who can comfort me—oh yeah!"

He shimmies out of his gym shorts and pulls off his sweaty Hanes v-neck, the fabric clinging up against his well-built chest. The sun beats hot against his skin, keeping the sweat so warm it gives Blaine small burning sensations. A shower wouldn't be so adverse presently, so Blaine happily stepped out of his briefs and stretched his arms upward, sighing as the muscles in his back loosened and several of his bones cracked.

There he stands, stark naked. Blaine Anderson, flashing the world atop his balcony, only not really, since the balcony faces the Ohio woods and not any place even vaguely inhabited by humans. Blaine Anderson, letting it all _quite literally_ hang out, be it shame or genitalia. The resemblance he shares with _Yentl_'s Avigdor in that one skinny-dipping scene is frightening.

"Why won't you answer me? The silence is slowly killing me!" Blaine howls as he opens the door to his room. "Oh yeah!" And fist pump. And fist pump.

Wait.

Was that a—?

Blaine's eyes fly open from their mid-song squint.

.:.

"Alright, Pavarotti," Kurt hedges deceptively, and then he breaks off into a hurried sprint in the direction of the towel shelf, refusing to look back at the noisily squawking bird. "Okay...okay..." His fingers brush against the fabric of a folded towel set. Yes! Yes! Just a little bit further—

"_OH MY GOD!"_

Never mind.

Blaine Anderson, completely unclothed, comes barreling into the bedroom as if projected from a cannon, effectively colliding against Kurt, equally naked save for his expression (which happens to be completely composed of insanity).

"Jesus Christ!" Blaine yells, trying to push himself off of Kurt. His palms can't find any purchase an Kurt's fresh-from-the-shower slick skin that smells faintly of apricot. "Why are you _wet_?"

"Why am I wet—why are you _NAKED_?" Kurt shouts, performing an extremely complicated leap off of Blaine and behind the couch. He reaches behind him and grabs a blanket, quickly making it his first priority to swath himself in the material so as to hide his nakedness.

"Why are _you _naked?" Blaine demands, eyes searching up and down Kurt's (now clothed) body wildly. "Didn't you hear me coming in?"

"I was in the shower, you dumbass, didn't you hear the water?"

Blaine motions to his iPod earphones. "Music? Duh?" His thumb surreptitiously finds the pause button, silencing Maroon 5's concerns about answers, or the lack thereof.

Kurt freezes up and emits a strangled choking noise. Blaine's nakedness is obvious as he struggles to stand upright, and frankly, Kurt isn't ready to see _all of that_, especially all of _Blaine's that_. "Oh, hell. Penis!" Kurt whimpers hysterically, holding his hands up to his face. "Put some clothes on before I cut your balls off! And then feed them! To...to _Pavarotti_!"

"That's quite the threat," Blaine mutters, grabbing a towel from the shelf and wrapping it around his trim waistline. "I mean, that's like the seventh time you've used that one on me. I'm running out of testicles for you to chop off."

Kurt's expression is positively murderous, so Blaine wisely holds both of his heads up in the air in a sign of resignation and slinks into the bathroom, leaving Kurt alone to ponder the frenzied rushing in his ears.

.:.

Kurt lies prone on his bed, drumming his hands against his stomach and listening to the ruffling noises of Blaine making his tiny bed out of the comforter. "I don't want you ever talking about that, _ever_," Kurt says sharply, staring up at the ceiling and counting the divots in the plaster.

Blaine chuckles dryly. "I wasn't going to."

Kurt hums in satisfaction. He can live with the situation if it isn't ever mentioned. Don't ask, don't tell.

"It's just..._wow_," Blaine murmurs pensively. "Just...naked."

"Stop it, Blaine." Kurt says. "Don't even go there."

Blaine swallows. He manages to choke down the funny feeling of warmth that had been developing in the back of his throat. "I don't want you taking this the wrong way," he says slowly. Decisively. "But you're..."

"Hm?"

"Never mind. You're going to say something verbally abusive, I can just tell."

"No, I won't."

"You're going to panic and threaten to cut my penis off again."

Kurt reaches behind himself, grabs a throw pillow, and gamely chucks it in Blaine's direction. "Orders are orders, Blaine."

Blaine presses his lips together in a thin line and hesitates. "Beautiful. You're beautiful," he admits. "You...you shouldn't let anyone tell you otherwise."

Kurt pales instantly, but he can't deny the wonderful feelings the compliment sends through his body, sparking nerves he didn't know he had. "Thank you," he whispers. "I've got a biting and caustic comment ready right now, but I will refrain." The lie instantly puts a damper on said nerves. "Where were you today?"

"I talked with my dad about our engagement," says Blaine abruptly. "Let's change the subject."

"I want to know."

"I don't want to tell you."

Kurt _harrumphs_ and pulls the blankets around himself even tighter.

"Tell me about yourself," Blaine prods. "Things that I truly don't know about you."

Kurt pulls the covers tighter around himself and racks his brain for some answers. "My mother died when I was eight years old. She got tuberculosis and just...she always had a weak immune system, you know?" He pauses. "I was bullied a lot in high school. Just the standard locker pushing. Dumpster tossing. The name calling. I still can't look at a slushee cup without flinching."

"Oh," Blaine says.

"Haven't had a boyfriend since college," Kurt continues. "My first musical I ever saw on a _real stage_—Broadway, I mean, not some community theatre—was _Jersey Boys_. One of my many bullies turned out to be a..._very_ angry, very closeted homosexual."

Kurt cannot begin to describe the reluctance he feels to tell Blaine his next factoid. "Haven't slept with anyone since I had aforementioned boyfriend in college."

"That's a long time," Blaine remarks, the condom he had hidden in his wallet practically burning a hole through the leather.

Kurt huffs indignantly. "That's all you got from that?"

"Maybe?"

"I don't have the time for sex," Kurt retorts.

Blaine smiles. "Everyone has time for a quickie," he says sagely. "I'm not even that sex-obsessed and I know that."

"You're gross," Kurt says.

Blaine's smile falters. "...you were talking about _Jersey Boys_?" he asks, deigning to switch topics.

"You know, the story about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons?"

"I don't," Blaine responds, laughing at how lispy Kurt's voice gets when tired.

"Come on. 'Oh, What A Night'? _Oh what a night...late December back in '63...!_"

Blaine chuckles darkly at Kurt's singing.

"_What a very special time for me_..._'cause I remember what a night!"_ Kurt insists. "Come on, you have to—"

Blaine gives up. "_Sweet surrender, what a night!_" he belts, voice skyrocketing dangerously into falsetto zone.

"What the hell?" Kurt asks.

"I knew the song," Blaine says quietly. "I just wanted to hear you sing it."

Kurt blinks. "Good _night_, Blaine," he finally forces out of his teeth, reaching over to flick off the light switch.

.:.

When Blaine wakes up the next morning, he props himself up on his elbows and cranes his neck so that he can see Kurt curled up in a tight ball, holding a fluffy down pillow to his chest protectively. He smiles at the picture and stands up, dragging the comforter with him and placing it at the foot of the massive bed, smoothing out the wrinkles and then unceremoniously plopping himself onto the space next to Kurt. Kurt wrinkles his nose and rolls over to allow more room for Blaine. Kurt's mussed hair and sleepy eyes come straight into Blaine's view and he grins. "You look pretty," he singsongs teasingly.

Kurt frowns and lifts up the edge of the quilt. "Get in bed before your mother comes in," he says, voice muffled by the pillow pressed into his face. "That's an order, Anderson."

Blaine busies himself with tucking himself around Kurt's body, tugging the pillow out of Kurt's grasp and allowing Kurt to spoon him instead, thus preventing any possible morning erection-and-Kurt interaction. Blaine struggles to hold back a few triumphant fist-pumps. Kurt snuggles in closer, his breath hot on the nape of Blaine's neck, and tells him, "You're warm. S'nice."

"You're sleepy and obviously very, very out of it," Blaine manages, squirming uncomfortably and staring at his crotch, hoping that his close proximity to Kurt wouldn't have any sort of effect on..._there_. "You haven't insulted me yet."

Kurt chuckles. "You're obviously out of it, too. I mean, you came into bed without me demanding it from you."

"I'm not into the whole non-consent thing, really."

"Shut up," Kurt says as the door handle begins to jiggle. "Your mom's here."

Evangeline pokes her head through the door with a silver platter of muffins and coffee. "Good morning, handsomes!" she cries, gracefully setting the plate down and gliding over to the foot of the bed. "How about another round of breakfast in bed? Elise and Brittany were out late last night catching up with a few people—" The memory of Elise getting wasted in the middle of the afternoon to the tune of Olivia Newton John's "Physical" flashes in Kurt's mind and he lets out an unchecked shudder. "—so they're still asleep. I figure we'll just have a lazy morning before the engagement party."

Blaine wriggles out of Kurt's hold and sits up in bed. "Where's dad?"

Evangeline quirks up a shapely eyebrow. "Working," she says evasively. "I'm going to leave now, enjoy your breakfast."

"Thanks, Mrs. Anderson," Kurt says.

"Call me Evangeline," she says, stepping away from the bed and heading towards the door. "Oh, and boys? Be ready by three o'clock, okay?"

"Yes, mama," Blaine answers in a small voice. He ducks his head down parallel to Kurt's. "Oh, my God, Kurt, I can't do this."

Kurt sits up and begins to work his fingers through his hair, preening, looking into a small compact mirror. "Can't do what?"

"I can't marry you and then divorce you and then..." Blaine cradles his head in his hands. "My dad's going to kill me, my mother's going to _die_, Brittany's going to be so confused—"

Kurt drops the compact mirror and looks at Blaine, really looks at him, a look of pure wonderment adorning his sleepy face. "Please don't tell me you're pulling out now. _Please_."

Blaine shakes his head. "I'm...I'm not. I was just being stupid. I mean, divorce happens all the time."

Kurt grins in relief. "Oh, thank God. I thought for sure you were going to leave me to be deported to Europe."

"We couldn't have that, could we?" Blaine replies lightly. He suddenly feels disappointed, and Kurt's words are a slap to the face. Oh, right, _this_ doesn't mean anything, _this_ is just a plan, oh, hey, it's also illegal.

"Now," Kurt says, grabbing the tray without preamble. "Let's get some food in us, shall we?" He expertly pours out a mug of black coffee, the aroma hitting him full force with its robust earthiness. "How would you like your coffee?"

"What, you don't remember?" Blaine asks. Just a day or so ago they traded coffee habits, and now Kurt doesn't remember any part of it?

The cup of coffee trembles slightly in Kurt's hands.

Blaine shrugs. "Nah, it's alright," he says, taking the cup from Kurt. "Drip coffee. Black, with sugar on special occasions." Kurt smiles widely and uses the tiny pair of tongs to drop a sugar cube into the mug.

"You like yours with skim milk in it," Blaine murmurs, accidentally brushing Kurt's cheek as he leans over to reach for the carton of milk. "And a spot of brown sugar to make it sweet. Right?"

"R-right," Kurt says, gratefully taking the mug from Blaine. "Do you want something to eat?" He lifts the top off of the plate and reveals a host of various breakfast pastries; cinnamon rolls, apple tarts, muffins, breakfast waffles with finely milled powdered sugar sprinkled on them. "Muffin? Looks like there's lemon poppy seed and raspberry." Blaine motions for a cinnamon roll and Kurt hands one to him, reveling in Blaine's childlike expression as he takes a bite.

"I love these things," Blaine says through a mouthful of cinnamon roll.

"I can see that," Kurt says with an airy laugh. "See? Everything's going to work out fine." His hands find Blaine's shoulders and squeeze, tracing the muscles with fleeting touches of his thumbs and rubbing up and down Blaine's biceps. "We're in this together. No one's going to die, no one's going to find out, no one's going to—"

"What are you doing?" Blaine inquires, cocking his head to the side as Kurt continues to massage his shoulders.

Kurt immediately stops in his ministrations and blushes a violent shade of red. "N-nothing."

Blaine smiles, eyes squinting at the ends. "Was it a nothing-nothing or a something-nothing?"

"Eat your food," Kurt says dismissively, biting into a waffle and letting the sugar dissolve on his tongue. "I have an hour-long moisturizing routine to finish and a wardrobe to select." He stretches his arm out to stroke against Blaine's cheek with the back of his hand. "You need to shave, too."

"Shaving. Gross," Blaine replies, wrinkling his nose.

Kurt smirks and leans up against the headboard with a content sigh.

A content sigh that is immediately overridden by a look of complete terror.

"_Blaine! _Oh, shit. Shit shit shit shi—"

With a spasmodic jerk, Blaine finds himself launching himself in Kurt's direction. "What is it? Are you okay? Oh, God, do I need to—"

"We have our engagement party in a few hours," Kurt says hollowly. "And we don't have an engagement story."

The tension rolls off of Blaine's shoulders. "...that's all you're worried about?"

Kurt frowns at him. "Blaine, you should know by now that I actually like romance. I refuse to get cozy with the idea of a subpar engagement."

Blaine extends his arms behind his head and watches Kurt, amused. "Why not just tell them the truth? You proposed on the street while we were walking to work."

"_Blaine._ Who do you think I am?"

"Crazy."

"_Blaine_."

"Look, Kurt," Blaine articulates, hands splayed out before him. "I'm awful at romance. You expect me to come up with a good cover story? I don't even know what you want from me. We've never discussed our relationship in full before."

Kurt expertly extracts a notebook from the bedside table and pulls out a mechanical pencil, clicking the lead out methodically. He tells Blaine, "Help me brainstorm."

"This is not very organic," Blaine complains with a childish pout. "Besides, I don't even have a ring."

"That won't be a problem," Kurt snaps. "Goodness, it's like you don't know me at all." He tosses a red jewelry box at Blaine. "Pick a ring, any ring."

Blaine scrutinizes the box's contents—all different kinds of rings, all simple and classic. The most outlandish one is designed to fit over three fingers, and it feels weighty in his palm. Noticing the ring Blaine had been examining, Kurt allows a horrified expression to settle on his face. "Don't pick that one."

"Wasn't going to," Blaine answers, selecting a white gold band inlaid with grains of diamonds and holding it up to Kurt's face. "This one good?"

"Does it fit?"

Blaine manages to poke his ring finger through it and smiles winsomely at Kurt, holding up his hand. "Yes?"

"Very nice," Kurt approves, returning his attention to the notebook. "We'll tell your family that you didn't want to spoil the engagement, and that's why you haven't been wearing my ring." He looks up at Blaine. "That is, by the way, _my_ ring. Not yours. You'll have to return it once we head back to New York."

"Huh? Oh, of course," Blaine says distractedly, watching the diamonds glitter in the morning light.

"Now," Kurt proclaims, poising the pencil on paper. "Our proposal. Any ideas?"

.:.

**Up next: Kurt and Blaine get ready for the engagement party together, the engagement party occurs, and an awkward first kiss.**

**Thank you all so much for taking the time to read and review each chapter! It really has been a blast getting to know you guys on here. As always, reviews are deeply appreciated and loved.**

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	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Glee or The Proposal.

**Read Me:**Here we go! (By the way, I was actually considering deleting the scene in the forest that's in this chapter, but then I decided to keep it in there just for fun.)

_"You can do this, but that would require you to stop snacking on children while they dream."_

—_Andrew Paxton, The Proposal_

**IV**

"Oh, Kurt, you look positively _stunning_," Evangeline gushes, spreading her hands out and walking towards the man in question in what seems to be an overdramatized attempt at slow motion. Her high heels click against the tile floor. "Give us a spin."

Kurt arches an eyebrow minutely and slowly schlepps around in a tiny circle so as to exhibit the white velvet jacket and periwinkle blue cropped trousers with the pinstripes he's currently wearing from as many angles as possible. He tries to soften the annoyed look on his face, but for all his effort, he just ends up looking like he's undergoing intestinal contractions.

Evangeline and Elise have twin grins planted onto their faces as they take out identical Nikons and begin purposefully snapping various shots of dolled-up Kurt, who coincidentally isn't really any more dressed up than regular Kurt. Blaine simply stands to the side, an amused look adorning his face as he watches his fiance stagger through the sudden deluge of pre-engagement feelings.

When all is said and done, Kurt excuses himself to stand with Blaine by the pita-and-hummus table and absentmindedly sips at a bit of champagne.

"People are going to start arriving," Blaine warns him.

"So?" Kurt says, continuing to grumpily sip at his drink.

"So I'd recommend _not_ looking like you're about to keel over and die," Blaine says, leaning over and dipping his finger into the hummus. He waggles his eyebrows at Kurt as he licks it off.

Kurt turns a vibrant shade of scarlet and slaps Blaine on the forearm. "_Blaine_! Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm actually getting married to such a fucking—" A woman with a bright smile and a circlet of diamonds wound around her neck tightly approaches them and Kurt immediately retracts his hand from Blaine's arm, rids himself of his awful expression, and plasters a vacant smile onto his face. "Oh, hello!" Kurt says brightly. "Enjoying the party?"

Blaine hastily nudges Kurt into his arms.

The woman's eyes shift from Blaine to Kurt. "It's wonderful," she says, flipping her brassy blonde hair over her shoulder and giving them another one of her disconcerting smiles. She sticks out a hand. "I just wanted to congratulate the happy young couple. Marriage is _such_ a blessing." She claps her hand against her well-endowed chest, heavily made-up eyes glistening with tears. "_Such_ a blessing indeed."

Blaine nods at her. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Martin," he says kindly.

"Is that your husband?" Kurt asks, jerking his head in the direction of a man wearing a corduroy jacket and standing by the chocolate fountain.

"Yes! Ten years of bliss," she says, sighing for what Kurt assumes to be romantic effect. He neglects to inform her that her supposed husband has been sneaking lascivious glances towards Elise for the past fifteen minutes; regardless, Mrs. Martin floats away airily towards the lox finger sandwiches.

"Woo, what a party," Kurt exhales loftily, wriggling out of Blaine's grasp and straightening his jacket.

"You have to let me talk, Kurt," Blaine complains, grabbing a slice of pita and dipping it into the bowl of spinach and artichoke dip on the table. "People are going to start assuming things."

With a scowl, Kurt asks, "What kind of things, Blaine?"

"That, like, _you_ wear the pants in this relationship, and that you coerced me into this relationship—"

"Which would happen to be one-hundred percent true," Kurt says, absentmindedly popping a slice of cantaloupe into his mouth and licking the juice off his fingers.

"What? No—!"

"Don't even try to deny it, Blaine Anderson," Kurt shoots back sharply, his expression dangerous.

Blaine backs off accordingly.

Kurt smiles smugly to himself and for a few short minutes, he and Blaine watch as the Anderson Family living room is filled with various guests and partygoers—all of whom are completely alien to Kurt. He merely smiles vapidly at everyone who so much as throws a glance his way, mainly to keep people from getting into conversations. Best to allow everyone to assume that Blaine had selected him as a trophy husband, he figures, especially since Blaine's family is rich as balls anyway.

As the party progresses, however, Kurt finds himself pushed out into the crowd more and more by Blaine, who greets everyone with a jovial smile on his face and an occasional friendly pat on the rear. All of his friends from high school and a few from college are present, and they all congratulate Blaine on finding such a wonderful spouse and scold him for not telling them sooner. Blaine merely shrugs them off and tells them that he's a private person when it comes to romance; Kurt smiles coquettishly, shakes their hands, and sends them off graciously.

He can't help but feel a surge of pride whenever he glances up at Blaine. Kurt had cleaned Blaine up quite a bit for the party—they had spent nearly three hours holed up in the bathroom as Kurt had fretted about, shaving Blaine's chin carefully and trimming overgrown nostril hairs and styling his curls until they felt as springy and bouncy as possible. A quick adventure into Blaine's enormous walk-in closet and Kurt had managed to salvage a nicely-fitted Hugo Boss ensemble in a pale gray-purple color that would bring out the color of Blaine's eyes. All in all, a productive afternoon, and Kurt finds himself feeling vaguely proud of the man who's hanging onto his arm, proud of this _Blaine Anderson_.

Richard Anderson is there, as well, aloof and standoffish in his three-piece suit and sipping at some Chardonnay with a sour look on his face. Kurt watches him carefully, making sure not to do anything that would be classified as disrespectful or rude by his so-called fiance's father. He actually leans into Blaine's chest and asks him, "Is your dad okay with this?"

"He'll be fine," Blaine assures him, patting Kurt on the back comfortingly.

Much to Kurt's annoyance, that tiny exhibition of affection elicits a chorus of adoring noises from the crowd in the living room. Blaine waves it off with an easy smile and pulls Kurt into a tighter hug, clearly milking the attention like a farmer to a heifer.

"And the crowd goes wild," Kurt whispers angrily into Blaine's collar, trying hard not to inhale the cologne there.

"Let's just cut to the chase, boys," Elise calls from the bar at the corner of the living room. She raises her mug of beer. "We want the story!"

"Yes, the story!" the man Kurt recognizes at Blaine's high school friend, Wes.

"The engagement story!" everyone in the room but Kurt, Blaine, and Richard shout together.

"Engagement story!" Figgins, the stripper, hoots.

Kurt gives him the evil eye. Who the hell had invited Saggy McSaggy Butt to the party?

"Kurt," Blaine warns, rubbing at his shoulder.

"Okay, you want the story?" Kurt tells the crowd. "Um, here's the story." This had been the part he and Blaine had glossed over earlier, despite Kurt's plans. They had spent the majority of their free time fixing Blaine up for the party and verbally abusing each other. The notebook page Kurt had reserved for the engagement details had remained largely empty, much to his dismay.

"So..." Blaine begins, exchanging a desperate look with Kurt. "You know what? Kurt can tell the story. He loves telling this story."

"Um, well. We had been dating exclusively for a month, and I was trying to come up with ways to suggest um, _marriage_," Kurt begins, rocking on the balls of his feet. "Blaine's my private assistant, if you didn't know."

"I am," Blaine agrees. "So one day he left the office for a business trip and I stayed to look over...things. For the day. Only for the day."

"I was actually going to pick up his ring," Kurt adds hastily. "Show them the ring, babe." He reaches down, searching for Blaine's left hand, and only grazes his crotch once before snagging his wrist and holding it up like a referee at a wrestling match. The diamond-inlaid ring glitters in the light, and the partygoers all ooh and ah appreciatively. "It's a Dior," he boasts.

"And," Blaine says, taking his hand down from Kurt's grasp primly, "He left his phone at the office, and he had the details about a hotel room in a text message there."

"He's horrible and he doesn't trust me," Kurt grits through his teeth, giving Blaine a murderous stare, as if to say, _Why the hell are you making me look bad_?

"I thought he was cheating on me," Blaine says piously, planting his hands onto his chest and looking far off into the distance.

"I wasn't!"

"He wasn't," Blaine clarifies.

Kurt forces a smile and continues, "So of course I planned it all perfectly. He hopped into his cute little charmingly homosexual Volkswagon and drove right up to the Plaza and marched up to the room—"

"—it wasn't easy, either!"

"He offended so many people," Kurt says. "Including the person at the front desk. He almost got kicked out of the Plaza. He knocked down a tray for someone's afternoon high tea—"

"Accidentally," Blaine squeaks, his grip on Kurt tightening. "So when I opened the door, I found—"

"This is adorable," Elise interrupts, eyes glittering with tears.

"He found nothing," Kurt says quickly, shooing Elise away offhandedly. "He found nothing."

"Except a box!" Blaine exclaims triumphantly, raising his martini glass boisterously.

With a scowl, Kurt turns to Blaine, cocks his head to the side. "And what, pray, was in this box of yours?"

"Nothing!"

"Except for a ri—"

"Except for a bunch of tiny little cut-out confetti hearts that fluttered out," Blaine corrects. "All beautiful and delicate." He taps his fingers against his lips, caught in deep thought. "And if I remember correctly, he had printed out twenty or so pictures of his face and pasted them on the box. So beautiful."

Kurt slaps his face into his hands and tries his hardest not to knead his face. "At which point I _very pointedly_ stopped screwing around and stepped out from the bathroom." He reaches behind Blaine and squeezes at his butt in fair warning. "And I got down on one knee and proposed."

Blaine flinches at the feeling of Kurt squishing his ass. "He was dressed to the nines, in a black tuxedo," he grinds out. "Standing."

"Kneeling."

"Like a man."

"I asked him if he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me."

"And I said—"

"Yes, he said _yes,_" Kurt says, clearly aggravated. "And you know what happened after that."

"Gay sex?" Elise asks hopefully. "You were in a hotel room—"

"Okay, that's enough," Richard says, making his way through the crowd and breaking the mood. "Can we have some more of those sushi rolls on the counter? I'm feeling awfully peckish."

"Can we turn on the karaoke machine?" Wes asks hopefully. "Please? It's not an Anderson Family party without some karaoke."

"By all means," Blaine says dazedly, feeling his mauled butt sadly. Kurt's hands had practically tenderized it with the same amount of force as one would use to tenderize a cut of beef.

"Come with me," Kurt murmurs, pulling Blaine in the direction of the second kitchen. "Do not make eye contact with anyone—" He stamps on Blaine's foot. "I said _no eye contact_, Blaine!"

.:.

"What the hell was that, Blaine?"

"What are you complaining about now?"

"Little paper cut-out confetti hearts? How old are you, _five_?"

"Twenty-eight, actually."

"What are you going to do next, sing Rick Astley to me over your karaoke system?"

"Wait—can I?"

"_Blaine_."

"They're going to want us to sing something anyway!"

"We are _not_ going to sing together and we are _not_ Rick Roll everyone, okay?"

"Oh, you have a plan for this, too? Because the last time you tried to plan something out, that worked out so well—"

"Shut up and let me handle this before I—"

"Cut off my balls? Yeah, you're getting predictable, Kurt."

"..."

"..._ow!_ What the hell, Kurt?"

.:.

By the time Kurt and Blaine squeeze themselves to the front of the karaoke machine, the lights are dimmed and the music is loud. A few of Blaine's old friends from high school had plugged microphones into the karaoke jack, and there are song lyrics in huge, neon letters flashing on the plasma screen television. Strains of Michael Jackson and the Beatles worm their way through Kurt's head and he feels positively nauseous.

"Are you going to be okay?" Blaine murmurs, leading him to the couch in front of the television and sitting Kurt onto his lap. "Do you need some more booze?"

"I don't need to be inebriated to have a good time, Blaine," Kurt snaps irritably.

Kurt feels a slight shift in the couch and he looks over to find Elise grinning at him. "What do you want, Elise?"

"A duet, of course," Elise singsongs. She reaches out and reels in Brittany and Santana from their spot in the line that had formed for the karaoke machine.

Seeing Santana up this close, Kurt realizes, is incredibly nerve-wracking. The girl's face is angry, she looks strong enough to shatter her glass of whiskey with one hand, and her eyebrows are dark and arched. All in all, she's the complete opposite of Brittany, who looks more Victoria's Secret Angel than exotic dancer.

"Elise, what the hell?" Santana barks. "Me and Brit wants to get our karaoke on."

"I just want to sing," Brittany says, evidently for clarification's sake.

Elise frowns. "Why are you talking like that, Santana? You sound like you're from the Shore—"

"You look like you come from the _Shire_, princess," Santana counters acidly. She turns to face Kurt and looks him up and down, frowning and nodding at the same time. "Not bad, Anderson, where'd you pull this one from?"

"Work?" Blaine says with a shrug.

"For the record, Miss Santana, I pulled _him_ from work," Kurt corrects, shifting in his seat and accidentally smacking Blaine in the nose with his shoulder.

"Nice catch, Kurt," Santana replies approvingly. She looks at Blaine. "I like him."

Kurt doesn't really have many positive thoughts about Santana (he's still kind of puzzled as to why she would pair a thickly furred vest with a tight shirt dress), but he laughs it off and leans in closer to Blaine, secretly enjoying the warmth emanating from Blaine's chest.

Brittany leans down and puts her hands on her knees. She smiles. "You're cute," she tells Kurt, poking him on the nose and laughing.

"I know he is," Blaine agrees.

"You should sing us a song," Brittany says. "I mean, you two together. A duvet."

"Brittany, honey, it's a duet," Santana says, and it's the sweetest Kurt's heard her speak so far. He figures she has a bit of a sweet spot for the willowy too-dumb-to-be-stupid Brittany.

Blaine grins ear-to-ear. "Hear that, Kurt? I think they want us to sing together."

Kurt shakes his head. "No! No no no no no. One thousand times _no,_ Blaine, please."

"Oh, please," Santana says dismissively, pulling Kurt off of Blaine and steering him in the direction of the karaoke machine, which has just finished aiding Evangeline in her rendition of Gaynor's _I Will Survive_. "One stupid little song isn't going to kill you."

Figgins walks past them with a bottle of beer in his hands, winks at Kurt, and tells them, "You can tell he's a good singer by the way he drinks his soda pop."

Kurt, Blaine, Santana, and Brittany share a collective shudder; Elise merely catcalls in Figgins' direction and throws a steaming hot cheese ball at him.

"We only have oldies here, unfortunately," Elise calls from the sofa, licking residual cheese off her fingers as Kurt kneels down to examine the track listings in the machine.

"We'll make do," Blaine says, shooing the crowd away so that they form a semicircle around the karaoke machine's perimeter.

Kurt surmises that they're not going anywhere. People were going to watch him sing with _Blaine_! Abort! Abort abort abort!

"I don't see a boat," Brittany says blankly, but Santana is quick to silence her with a pat to the elbow.

Oh, God, had he said that out loud? Kurt's not sure, and he can't help but mentally flick through methods of castration. Best be ready to hurt Blaine when he got the chance—

"You said you know _Jersey Boys_, right?" Blaine asks, absentmindedly scrolling through the song listings with the remote on his microphone.

"Let me die," Kurt answers.

"You'll be fine, _babe_," Blaine says soothingly. "Just follow the lyrics."

"And the music, don't forget that," Elise says helpfully.

Kurt's eyes stray to the television. "Just pick something mindless and...unmeaningful." He fixes his bangs with his hand. "Yes, unmeaningful and shallow!" he cries. "Do you have Ke$ha on that thing?" His eyes widen as Blaine selects a track and slow, melancholy music begins to fill the room. Everyone goes silent, curious to see if Blaine's new fiance could sing as well as Blaine himself, and they all coo accordingly when they see the title of the song Blaine had selected.

"You guys are precious," Evangeline shouts from the snack table, where she's unloading a tray of fried spring rolls.

"Frankie Valli, _really Blaine_?" Kurt demands angrily, picking up his microphone and spritzing it with the antibacterial spray he keeps in his pocket.

Blaine shrugs. "It's a good song." He pauses. "It means something."

"But Blaine—"

"_My eyes adored you_," Blaine interrupts earnestly, holding a hand out in Kurt's direction. Kurt shuts his mouth and eyes. "_Though I never laid a hand on you, my eyes adored you. _Come on, Kurt, sing."

Kurt huffs and joins Blaine unenthusiastically: "_Like a million miles away from me you couldn't see how I adored you."_

_"So close_," Blaine croons, and Kurt can see Evangeline and Elise mouthing the words together in his peripheral vision.

"_So close, so close and yet so far away_," Kurt reluctantly returns with a forced smile, resisting the urge to find a cyanide pill and swallow it. He shuffles over and takes Blaine's hand. _You are insufferable and I hate you_, he wants to tell Blaine. "_Headed for city lights, climbed the ladder up to fortune and fame,_" he sings instead.

Blaine smiles smugly at Kurt and sings, _"I worked my fingers to the bone, made myself a name_."

Blaine had hit the nail on the head with this one. His voice is perfectly suited for the song, rich, velvety, and earnest. He even looks the part with his 50's haircut and his suit, melody warbling out from his mouth like a freakishly realistic recording of Frankie Valli himself. Kurt feels ridiculous as he sings in tandem to realizing that this song kind of, sort of narrates his relationship with Blaine.

"_Funny, I seem to find, that no matter how the years unwind—_"

"_Still I reminisce—_"

"_About the girl I miss—" _Kurt stops hesitantly. "_Guy I miss_," he corrects himself, much to the partygoers' amusement.

"_And the love I left behind..._"

After that, Kurt manages to stumble through another two choruses and a few hoots and hollers from his little pseudo-audience; all the while Blaine seems to be laughing at some kind of secret joke. Kurt quirks an eyebrow up at him afterward and simply glares, but Blaine doesn't seem to understand the gravity of his fury. He's too busy wooing his audience in a fashion more suited to some celebrity than a private assistant.

What was that?

"Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!" the crowd chants, banging their beer bottles against various hard surfaces and stomping the hardwood floor with their feet.

_Oh my God_, Kurt thinks frantically. _They want me to kiss my private assistant. I'm going to have to kiss my private assistant in front of all of Westerville_.

"That won't be necessary," Blaine says apologetically. "We're private—"

"Private freaks in the sack," Santana murmurs playfully. She leans over to nip Brittany on the collarbone.

"Kiss him!" someone shouts, voice close to hysterical.

"Oh, um, okay," Blaine says, resolve crumbling. He looks down at where his and Kurt's hands are just barely brushing up against one another, and then back up to Kurt's eyes, which are hard and steely.

Kurt makes a squeaking noise. "_Blaine! _What the hell are you—"

"Don't kill me, please," Blaine whispers as he leans in, cups Kurt's face in his hands, and guides Kurt's lips to his.

Kurt's eyes fly open in shock—_his private assistant is kissing him! This is the guy who files his papers and vacuums his office rug and buys him awful scones from Starbucks!—_but he can't deny that it feels _nice_. Blaine's mouth is warm and pleasantly wet against his, not breaching his personal bubble by breaking out the tongue, just kind of...there. Pressed up. Against his mouth. Oh, God, Blaine Anderson's kissing him! How could he let himself forget that?

Blaine's lips move against Kurt's gently, and his hands drift down from Kurt's jaw to his waist, settling at the juncture there naturally. Kurt's mind is in a frenzy, too sensitive at too many points at once, not really sure if kissing back would be deemed inconsiderate, not really sure if not kissing back would be considered frigid. For the moment, his mind is a hurricane and he's struck by a flurry of incomplete notions and ideas all whirling about in his head like...like _detritus_, he thinks wildly to himself. _Moldy, wet, detritus, that's what this is._

Kurt is saved from his thoughts by Blaine himself, who slowly releases Kurt from his grasp and steps back, a confused expression adorning his face. Kurt can feel the shock himself in the form of patches of heat blooming high on his cheekbones.

Both men are so surprised that they forget to register the loud cheering that has broken out in the living room.

"Not a word of this," Kurt hisses, spinning around on his heel in pursuit of some vodka with which to induce temporary amnesia.

.:.

"Blaine," Evangeline says, watching her son spin around on his barstool continuously, "You're going to get dizzy, _anak_,"

"No I'm not," Blaine says, continuing to shimmy around on his chair. "It's fun, look, see?" He gives her a humorless smile. "Whee."

Evangeline smiles back at him weakly and taps him on the knee, effectively stopping his movement. "Alright, Blaine."

All of the guests had left thirty minutes ago, and Kurt had disappeared with them without so much as a good-bye. Blaine's practically beside himself in confusion and has taken to spinning on the barstool like a maniac.

"I was wondering," Evangeline begins. "Well, I was talking to your father about this...and, well, _anak_, we just really would like to be around for your wedding."

"Oh," Blaine replies, twiddling his thumbs anxiously. "That's nice, I guess."

"So, I was wondering if you'd like to have the ceremony here instead of New York, Blaine," Evangeline says gently. "Your father and I, as well as Brittany and Elise. You know that it'll be hard for us to move. Brittany's so hard to travel with, and your father's caught up with his work—"

"You want to have the ceremony here in Ohio?" Blaine asks.

"Yes," Evangeline confirms. "You know how much this family means to me, right? I'm just so afraid that you're phasing us out of your life, Blaine."

"Oh, mom," Blaine says, leaning in close to his mother. "I don't know."

"We could have it a day after tomorrow," Evangeline says firmly. "I called up Zegna and organized a fitting for both you and Kurt. It'll be our engagement present to you two."

"Mama—"

"Don't _Mama_ me, Blaine Anderson, we're finally doing something for _you two_." She looks up at him with kind eyes. "You can get _married_ in Ohio now. And you and Kurt won't have to lift a finger, I promise. I'll handle everything."

Blaine laughs humorlessly. "Oh, there _will_ be lifted fingers," he mutters, thinking of Kurt and his probable reaction to the notion of getting married in Ohio.

"What was that?"

"Kurt lived in Ohio," Blaine amends quickly, proverbial tail in between his legs. "We could drive his family down, too."

"We could, if he wanted," Evangeline says with a smile. "Come on, help me put away the dishes, _anak_, my back is sore."

.:.

Kurt has a bicycle.

Scratch that.

Kurt has stolen one of Elise's bicycles from the massive garage and is riding it towards the Ohio woods with a palpable fury, desperation leaking through his bones like water through toilet paper. He really can't deal with this; his thoughts are a mess and his lips are still stinging from his kiss with Blaine. He can feel the sting fading as he cruises further and further into the woods. He's forgetting. Forgetting what it feels like to have Blaine's lips on his, all gentle and mild and _gee, Kurt, I'm a gentleman, see?_

He's also tipsy. Really, really tipsy.

There's music coming from a clearing deeper in the forest, and Kurt's brow furrows at the sound of it. He pedals faster until he's just skirting the border of the clearing and lets the bike fall to the ground with an unceremonious thump.

.:.

Blaine sighs as he logs into his email account and scrolls through the messages. People are already beginning to react to Kurt's absence, and Blaine does the best he can to answer all of the business queries—_Kurt's not available, Miss Jones, but I'm sure he was never interested in heavy-knit sweaters_ and _Yes, the endorsement with Sunshine Corazon is still on. No, don't let her work with other companies, Kurt's not going to approve_.

When he's done with his emails, he finds his hand drifting toward his lips, which are still buzzing with the memory of Kurt—Kurt _kissing _him. Sweetly. Not angrily. Without any threats to his penis.

Blaine shakes his head, checks TD Ameritrade, buys a few more stocks, sells three others, and fiddles with a few games of Bejeweled before standing up in his computer chair and grabbing his windbreaker from the coatrack.

He'll take a walk, clear his mind. Then he'll tell Kurt about the wedding over a nice dinner, maybe convince him to open up a little bit more.

He likes the idea.

.:.

"Brittany, _what_ are you doing?" Kurt asks, peering from behind a fern frond at the blonde, who's dancing around to tribal music. She's good, Kurt gives her that, all shaking hips and moving legs and _wild_, but he doesn't really understand anything at all. Namely the reason as to why Brittany's dancing alone in the woods.

Brittany stops in her movements and smiles dazzlingly. The music stops. "Hi, Kurt," she says vacantly.

"Um, hi, Brittany," Kurt manages, stepping from behind the fern and into the clearing. He toes a few fallen leaves. "May I ask what you're doing here?"

"I'm dancing," Brittany answers with a laugh. "I mean, I thought it was pretty obvious," She shakes her hips experimentally. "Santana says it's good for the soul."

"That's...nice," Kurt says, eyebrow drifting up.

Brittany gives Kurt another disconcertingly happy smile. "Want to try?"

"Try what?"

"Try _dancing_," Brittany says. "It's not hard, promise. You look like you'd be good at it."

"Who told you I'm a good dancer?"

"Figgins said I'm not allowed to say."

"All of a sudden Figgins is a viable source of information?"

"So," Brittany says conversationally, popping her lips together and disregarding Kurt's question entirely. "Want to give it a try?"

"I guess," Kurt replies tersely, kind of miffed that Brittany had ignored him.

"Go," Brittany says, motioning to the center of the clearing where there are less dried leaves littering the floor.

Kurt squeezes his eyes shut and attempts to loosen up. This would be good for him. He needs this. He needs to forget.

"Santana says that dance is all about what's inside you," Brittany says helpfully, flicking the radio on (had that been there before?).

Kurt inhales sharply as a familiar tune begins to play, the sound filling his body with a weird sense of euphoria. "To the window, to the window..." Kurt murmurs, tapping his hand to his thigh in time to the beat.

"Uh-huh?" Brittany nods encouragingly, beckoning for him to continue.

"To the wall, to the wall..." _Okay, this is just getting fucking weird_, some distant, detached part of his mind thinks. _Why am I singing bad rap songs with a suspicious girl in the middle of the woods_? "To the sweat drips down my balls..."

"To all you bitches crawl!" Brittany finishes excitedly, jumping up and down and clapping her hands together.

"To all skee skee motherfucker, all skee skee gat dayum!" Kurt raps, voice growing stronger, arms propelling around like the hands of a clock.

Brittany raises a single fist, raises her face to the heavens, and hollers, "TO THE WINDOOOOW!"

Kurt wiggles his hips enthusiastically and tries gyrating around with Brittany. "TO THE WAAAALL!"

Then, in unison, "TO THE SWEAT DRIPS DOWN MY BALLS!"

"Kurt?"

Kurt feels the excitement in his chest drop to his bladder and freeze. "Blaine?"

"Brittany?" Brittany asks.

"I was, erm, expressing my feelings," Kurt tries to explain, making terse hand gestures and sputtering as Brittany surreptitiously turns off the stereo. "Because, um, well, Brittany told me it was a good idea." He looks at his feet and furrows his brow. "Then again, why the hell was I listening to Brittany?"

Blaine looks at him curiously, hands in his pockets. "And you came up with..._balls_?"

"...no—"

"Kurt, are you trying to tell me something?"

Kurt glares at him icily. "Of course not, Blaine!" he half-yells, crossing his arms to his chest tightly.

"Hey, listen, there's something you might want to know about," Blaine says, backing off a little bit and casting a glance at Brittany, who is quietly packing up her stereo and slipping off into the thicket like some kind of woodland creature. "It's getting kind of late."

"Excellent deductive reasoning," Kurt snaps, gesturing to the steadily darkening sky.

Blaine snorts and takes Kurt by the arm. "Come on, _babe_, time to get back inside," he says, and Kurt reluctantly acquiesces.

"Balls, balls, balls," Blaine chants under his breath as he crouches down to grab Elise's bike from the cushy forest floor. He wheels it all the way back to the manor.

He decides that he shouldn't let Kurt ever be alone again. The last time it had happened, they had collided into each other, buck naked.

.:.

"You want to get married..._the day after tomorrow_?" Kurt demands, angrily picking pieces of decaying leaves from his hair, the last vestiges of his short-lived career as a rapper-in-the-woods, with a fine-toothed comb. "Are you insane, Blaine?"

"Look, I know it's not the most practical thing ever," Blaine says, sitting up in bed and squishing a pillow in between his fingers, "But the idea's been brewing in my mom's mind ever since she found out. My parents are pissed that we didn't tell them, and you know dad. He'll never go to New York to see us get married."

"So you decided to get married _here_? In the middle of Hick Town, Ohio?"

"That's Westerville, Ohio to _you,_ Mr. Secret-Lima-Native," Blaine says icily. "I know that you're not emotionally prepared for this and whatever, but this is..._really _important to my mother."

Kurt balks. "Yes, well, I'm not _fashionably_ prepared for this, Blaine! I don't have a suit! Do you know how long it took for me to plan my junior prom ensemble? Do you _really_ think that we're going to pull off a wedding in a _day_?"

"Like I said," Blaine says grimly. "We're a big name here in Westerville. Dad says the word and the entire city shuts down. My mother told me that she has everything under control. We have the paperwork, gay marriage has been legalized in Ohio, Mama has the arrangements with the venue completed...besides, at least we can get it over and done with without having to plan it all on our own."

"You're joking," Kurt deadpans. "Please tell me you're not agreeing to this insanity."

Blaine reaches over and tilts Kurt's chin up so they're looking straight at each other. "It's not the only insanity I've agreed to in the past, you know."

Kurt sulks wordlessly and fixes the neckline of his pajama top, avoiding eye contact with Blaine.

"We can invite your family?" Blaine offers weakly.

He's not expecting Kurt's response.

"I don't _have_ a family, Blaine!" he shrills, throwing the comb to the carpeted floor in frustration. "God, Blaine, don't you _get it_? I hate it here because it reminds me of everything—"

"What are you talking about?" Blaine asks.

"Haven't you ever wondered why I _never_ talk about my family when I'm around you?" Kurt challenges. He swallows painfully, and he can see red through his eyelids when he blinks. "My mother died when I was eight. Breast cancer."

Blaine gulps. "Kurt, I didn't know—"

"You know what happened to my father?" Kurt questions, voice dangerous. "Ask me! Ask me, I _swear to God_—"

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Blaine says, carefully scooping a shaking Kurt up into his arms comfortingly. "No need to cry—"

"I'm _not_ crying." Kurt looks up at him furiously. "He's _dead_, Blaine! He died after I went to New York. He died alone and it was all my fault. I should never have left him—"

Blaine pulls Kurt closer to him and drapes the comforter around his shivering form. "Shh, it's not your fault, Could _never_ have been your fault."

"I suck," Kurt moans in between long gasps for breath. "I suck so bad. I make it look like I live this _awesome life_ and I just suck. Everyone thinks I'm some cannibalistic harpy and that's because I _am_."

"Hey," Blaine says sharply. "I never called you a harpy."

Kurt shoots him a murderous look.

"I called you an Incubus. And a Succubus, on occasion," Blaine says. Kurt smacks him on the shoulder. "Ow, dammit, Kurt!"

Kurt doesn't say anything.

Blaine sighs, shifts in bed, and hugs Kurt close to him. "I thought you were some demon come to haunt me," he admits. "But you know, once you get past the gratuitous bitch glares and half-baked castration threats, I think you're a pretty...cool guy."

"Don't lie, you think I'm awful," Kurt mumbles into Blaine's pajama sleeve.

"Well, not really, I just think you're kind of scared, and with good reason," Blaine says smoothly. "I'm scared, too. And I've been pretty awful to you."

"I don't think your family likes me very much," Kurt whispers miserably.

Blaine heaves another sigh. "You have a fitting with Zegna tomorrow," he says. "My mother's going to have no problems with you once she sees how into shopping you are, just like her." He pauses and rubs a soothing circle into Kurt's back. "Weren't you the one telling me that everything was going to be fine?"

"I guess," Kurt says.

"You have everything going for you," Blaine says philosophically. "You're young, you're smart, you're strong. Okay?"

"Okay."

They lie together on the bed for another fifteen minutes, Kurt shamelessly whimpering into Blaine shoulder and Blaine patting rather awkwardly at his boss' back. The latter is left wondering what exactly there is to say to an anguished Kurt; after a few moments of thought, he decides that it would be best to let Kurt enjoy the much-needed silence.

Finally, Kurt says in a small voice, "Blaine?"

"Yes, Kurt?"

"Can you get off the bed so I can sleep? And can you cover Pavarotti's cage again?" The implications don't even sting Blaine's ego. After laying a rag over Pavarotti's gilded cage, he quietly slips off the bed, retreats to his comforter on the floor, and lies awake until he can hear the light snores of a snoozing Kurt.

That's how he drifts off to sleep—to the soft hitching of Kurt's breathing and Pavarotti's muted coos.

.:.

_Blaine gasps as he feels a pair of lips mouthing along the dip in his stomach, climbing up to meet his collarbone, higher and higher until the lips are on his, moving aggressively. Commandingly. Blaine's so out of his mind that he can barely scrape up the cranial matter to participate in the kiss as well, his lips moving weakly, hands roaming everywhere, up, down, across his chest, dipping past his hipbone. _

_ "Say my name," Blaine hears, and intellectually he _knows_ that this isn't the stuff of his typical fantasies. The body is too soft, the cheek too smooth and hairless. And for some reason, he can feel the satin of designer boxers against his skin—a far cry from the cotton boxer briefs he normally daydreams about. But for all the frivolity—the nice boxers, the freshly shaven face, the silken hair, and the complete lack of a coarse anything, the kiss is aggressive. It floors him._

_ "Kurt," Blaine breathes, and Kurt leans back from his chest and smiles widely at him._

_ "I'm so glad you married me," Kurt murmurs, pressing his lips to Blaine's once more._

.:.

Blaine wakes up with a raging hard-on, and miserably deals with his problems in the bathroom before crawling into the bed with Kurt and avoiding thoughts of dream-Kurt and what an excellent kisser he had been. Once those are avoided, Blaine finds himself having to jump through various mental hoops in order to combat thoughts of how Kurt had kissed him the day before at the engagement party.

It's all become a rather monotonous routine, really. Wake up, get into bed with Kurt, pretend to be in love with him, put on a chipper act for his parents.

Blaine wonders how long he'll be able to pull it off.

"Blaine, Kurt," Richard says from the other side of the door. Blaine hastily nudges Kurt awake ("Fuck you, Blaine Anderson, fuck you," Kurt ends up mumbling sleepily) and calls for his father to come in.

"Are you decent?" Richard asks from outside.

"Yes? I don't know," Blaine says. "We're both clothed, if that's what you mean."

The door swings open and Richard, still clothed in his bedtime robe, walks into the room. "I think you might want to come with me," he says. "There's someone you'll want to see."

"Who?" Kurt asks, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"You'll find out," Richard says. "Meet me in the dining room, okay? We'll have breakfast after."

Kurt hops out of bed and washes his face. He brushes his teeth with an electric toothbrush, changes into a scoop-necked sweater, and wiggles into his pants in record time. After that, he pops a few Tylenols to ease the pounding in his ears. Blaine takes the other side of the bathroom, tries to avoid thinking about what he had been doing in there just half an hour ago, and pulls a polo over his head and jeans onto his ass.

It feels wonderfully domestic, like they could fall into such a pattern of married life without even trying, and the idea makes Kurt cringe.

They're out of the door in fifteen minutes and into the dining room in twenty.

"Hello, boys," Richard says, ushering them through the back door and leading them to the yard.

"Is there something you want us to see?" Kurt asks, pursing his lips together suspiciously.

"Dad, don't you think you're being a little bit cryptic?" Blaine says, rubbing at his belly insistently. "Let's go back and have breakfast. I'm sure that this can wait."

"No, it can't," Richard counters firmly, making a waving motion with his right hand and standing up on his toes. "Alright, you can come out now."

Kurt and Blaine peer over Richard's shoulder, and both feel a sinking sensation in their stomachs when the woman who's been crouching behind a conveniently located plant in the Anderson yard is revealed.

"Well, well, well," a woman with a voice as dry as the Sahara says, stepping out from behind a pot of leafy green foliage. She acknowledges Blaine and Kurt with a snide, "Jon Gosselin. Kate Gosselin. How's this marriage thing working out for you?"

Kurt swallows and takes in the sight of her cropped gray-blond hair and bright blue sweatsuit.

Sue Sylvester has come to Westerville.

.:.

**Up next: Sue Sylvester gives Kurt and Blaine's relationship a check-up, wedding plans are made, and Kurt contemplates his relationship with Blaine.**

**Also, reality is disregarded in the name of pointless crack.**

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